who recently launched their own YouTube channel videos about business,

technology and media. check out their video about

who defends the earth from asteroids next

so one of the most ancient struggle in humanities's existence

is our fight fight for survival with nature

and more specifically our struggle to survive against animals

humans have struggled with animals since well...

pretty much forever and even in the 20 and 21st centuries

nature will often get the better of us

many of you will have probably heard about the great emu war

in which the Australian government went to war with modern

machine guns against their emus population .. and failed

this is a similar story but even more wierd

lets start with where the story takes place

The Galapagos islands in the pacific ocean that are a part of ecuador

the island are famous for their biological diversity

which was so great , it was the place that

helped Charles Darwin

to develop his theory of evolution

there are several animal species that can only be found on the islands

like the Galapagos tortoise the largest tortoise

species in the world but then... goat

started arriving and became the greatest threat to

the native species of the island that they've ever known

the islands are over 900km away from the

south american mainlands so they didn't swim , they were brought by humans

who thought it was a great idea at the time

the Spanish brought them for food and released them into the wild

but when they found out that British pirates were settling the area

and fighting these goats for their own food they released dogs

into the wild to try and kill them that

didn't work and then on one of the islands

in 1959 a couple fishermen brought just 3 goats

that also escaped into the wild one male and

two females just 14 years later

it was estimated that those 3 original goats

had exploded into a population of

over 30000 goats that were rampaging

across the islands by the 19 90s the goat the problem

began to get out of hand with the goat army over

25000 strong it was destroying the natural habitats

of the islands they were eating everything they could find

which was destroying the food eaten by the islands native

species as a result creatures like the giant

Galapagos tortoise were starving to death their own numbers

had decreased form over 25000 down to just

3000 left by the 19 70s the

goats were creating an environmental disaster

and concerned biologists began brainstorming

potential solutions it was eventually decided

that the native wildlife on the islands needed to be saved and the only way

to do that was to remove all the 250000

goats rounding them all up and transporting them somewhere else

somewhere else was decided to be difficult

so several other crazy plans were developed instead

including one idea to import lions to

the island s that would eat the goats they eventually decided that

was dumb but agreed that an all out war

needed to be declared on the goats and every single last goat

on the islands needed to be destroyed and for that

they brought in the military after

after years of debating and planning the Galapagos conservancy initiated

project Isabella the systematic killing of all goats

and other pests from the Galapagos islands

the began at first simply with squads of hunters

crossing the islands and shooting as they found them

but this was determined to not be terribly efficient or quick enough

so then they brought in helicopters with trained sharpshooters

brought in from New Zealand to fly around and mow down the goats in herds.

There would be two gunners on either side of the helicopter

and when the pilot managed to herd a group of goats together

into a tight pack they would open fire and wipe all of them out

this tactic proved effective because within in the first year

starting, 90% of the islands goats

had been eliminated the remaining 10% meant

thousands of goats where still out there though. And they started going

under ground. The surviving goats grew

wise to the sound of helicopters knowing that their sound meant instant death

they scattered and fled to the hidden parts of the island

and continued gorilla style war against their human attackers

You already know how quickly

just three goats managed to reproduce into 30,000 goats

so even if only a handful remain

the environmental disaster they were causing would restart

all over again eventually all bold

new strategy had to be developed to finish the war.

And so project Isabella came up with the idea of

Judas Goat, essentially a team would capture a female goat from the wild

tag it with a gps tracking

device and release it to go find it's friends the hunters would follow

the goat back to the herd and just like Judas

it would betray it's friends to be slaughtered.

Once the herd was eliminated the hunters would always leave the Judas Goat alive

to go find new friends to start the entire process

over again. Everywhere the Judas Goat went

it unknowingly would bring death it.

Over two more long years the team employed

over 900 such Judas Goats to finish the war

by 2006 it was declared

that the main islands were free of goats for the first time in

centuries and the vegetation they destroyed

was begging to come back. The Galapagos turtle

population has since rebounded to over 19,000

so the operation has achieved it's goals

that being said, project Isabella is not

without controversy the slaughter of a quarter of a million

goats was and is controversial today to some

but their deaths met the saving from extension

of several other species.

it should be humanities's responsibility to protect all life

on our planet because we're the only species

cable of understanding how to

do it.

One of the biggest threats to life on earth comes in the form of asteroids from space.

and my friends over at Cheddar have created

a really interesting video about how's responsibility it is exactly

to protect us from them, the link to their video and channel

is in the description and I strongly encourage you to

check it out and consider subscribing to them if you enjoy

the videos I create .

they make informational videos about business, technology, and media

and they just recently launched their own channel so if you're looking to

learn more about the world go and check them out next.

*outro music*