Forget Piranha! This is the most dangerous creature of the Amazon jungle

The Amazon jungle is really in danger because of this creature, and science scratches its head to find a solution.

The Amazon Forest is a "mecca" of the world's most feared creatures. Lobster, leopard, snake, centipede, alligator, giant Anaconda, fish Piranha . all made Amazon a name shuddering when it came to it.

However, now the scientific world is having a headache because an organism is considered to be the most dangerous, with the harm they cause . far beyond death. And believe it, that dangerous creature is . the Amazon golden mussel (Limnoperna fortunei - golden mussel).

Yellow mussels are the most dangerous animal in Amazon.

It looks harmless and very . delicious, but the golden age is an extremely dangerous invasive species. They originated in China, but have followed merchant ships who broke into South America in the 1990s. And then after less than a decade, they have completely invaded the waters of the Amazon.

Yellow mussels have very strong vitality. They can tolerate many different events from the environment, grow very fast and extremely . aggressive. Monster boys have changed the entire water environment here, killing many native species.

This is really a disaster, because the Amazon River is still considered the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world today.

Not only nature, but the economic damage of this species is not small either. Brazilian experts say they have proliferated to the point of clogging pipes of hydropower plants, causing harms of up to $ 20,000 / day (more than VND 440 million).

The economic damage of this species is not small.

A breakthrough and extremely safe method to destroy invading creatures

In fact, golden mussels are just a good example of the harm of invasive species to lands in the world. Therefore, it will be necessary if we can provide an effective way to solve these uninvited guests.

Destroying invasive animals is not a new idea, but the methods of doing that are always controversial. In the past, people put into the environment an "enemy natural" species of invading creatures, or use strong chemicals to attack them. However, all are more or less affecting and endangering native animals.

But Marcela Uliano da Silva from the University of Rio de Janeiro - Brazil's new star in science, has come up with an incredibly wonderful solution. Instead of traditional ideas, she aimed at something more complex, but more potential: gene technology.

More specifically, Uliano da Silva wants to "kidnap" a number of mussels, then destroy a gene behind the horrific adaptability of them. This mussel will be released to the wild to continue breeding, and then generations will die slowly.

Uliano da Silva - new star of Brazilian science circles.

In recent years, DNA editing technology has become more popular, easier to use and . cheaper. This is not the first time this technology has been applied. In the past, scientists have annihilated some genes of the fighting fish - the creature that is invading most of the Great Lakes' environment (five large lakes of North America).

However, some people are concerned that the genetic modification of a " strong" species like yellow mussel may cause many unpredictable consequences in the future. "We know evolution is an ongoing process," said James Collin, an evolutionary biology professor at the University of Arizona (USA). Clearly, we cannot be sure of anything about the dynamics of nature.

Currently, Uliano da Silva has coded some important areas of golden mussel genes - to be published in July in the journal PLOS ONE.

According to her, she can remove genes that help boys cling to boats, genes that help fight disease and reproduce boom in any space.