Why can't Japan capture Australia in World War II? Australia was driven to collapse by an animal.

Although Japan gained some advantages in the early days of the Pacific War, it did not last long, and Japan suffered a big loss when it approached Australia. At that time, Japan relied on a powerful navy to dominate the whole of Asia. On the Pacific battlefield, Japan originally wanted to get some wool from Australia, but in the end it was unable to invade Australia. Although Australia looks like an isolated battlefield, it is not that simple to break through. And Australia's biggest enemy may be native animals, which almost caused great disaster.

Since Australia's independence, the biggest foreign invasion was Japan's invasion of Australia in World War II. The powerful Japanese navy took the opportunity to attack Solomon Islands after defeating the US Pacific Fleet in the first and fourth stages. The army has been advancing to Guadalcanal Island, which is separated from Australia by water. The air force even attacked Darwin Harbour in Australia.

However, this seemingly severe national crisis was finally disintegrated by the US-Australian Coalition forces, and the Japanese never set foot in Australia again.

However, a dramatic historical joke happened in 1926 before World War II. If the Japanese can carefully study Australia's ecosystem in more than ten years, I'm afraid it's still useless to send 100 thousand troops. 1926 Australia was not invaded by any country, but the whole country was on the verge of collapse, and the culprit was the rabbit.

Maybe you think rabbits are cute, and it's good to keep one as a pet, but what about giving you a hundred? Do you still think they are cute? For Australia at that time, it was not 100 rabbits, but 100 billion rabbits.

Australia is a country completely surrounded by the ocean and the smallest of the seven continents. Its ecosystem is extremely unique and fragile. Because it has not been disturbed by the outside world for thousands of years, marsupials and grasslands here have formed a very simple food chain system. Once invaded by alien species, the whole ecosystem may collapse. After Europeans colonized Australia, the animals carried by ships were mainly used for residents' food, but after the colonists established themselves, some animals began to be released into the wild for hunting, including 24 European rabbits.

There are no natural enemies of rabbits such as eagles, foxes and wolves in Australia's native animals. As an imported rabbit, it suddenly found itself in a paradise without danger, adequate food and loose soil, and immediately started the infinite breeding mode. As the ancestors of tens of billions of rabbits, these 24 European rabbits are undoubtedly the opened Pandora's Box. From 1866 to 1896, the offspring of these rabbits expanded in all directions at an average annual rate of 130 km. By 1907, rabbits occupied almost all of Australia from east coast to west coast. By 1926, the number of rabbits in Australia is conservatively estimated to exceed 1000 billion.

Australia's marsupials are obviously no match for the rabbit army. Rabbits not only seized their caves, but also robbed their grain reserves, and dozens of wild animals became extinct. Australia, which has the reputation of "a country riding on the back of sheep", was once unable to raise sheep because the grass was eaten up by rabbits, so countless farms were forced to close down. In order to save their country, Australians first introduced foxes, but after a while, foxes found it better to kill slow-moving local animals than rabbits. Because of this, Australians had to kill the fox before the flood came.

This change took place in the 1950s, when biologists introduced a biological virus specifically targeting North American rabbits. After the introduction, rabbits were once destroyed by more than 99.9%. However, with the change of drug resistance and gene selection, this proportion is declining, and the "human-rabbit war" that may make Australia a headache will soon break out again.