More stupid animal tricks

Courtesy of Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club):

In the 1870s, a man named Spencer Baird, playing God, decided the cheapest form of protein for Americans was the European carp. For twenty years, he shipped baby carp to every part of the country. He convince a hundred different railroads to carry his baby carp and release them in every body of water their trains passed. He even outfitted special railroad tanker cards that carried nine-ton shipments of baby carp to every watershed in North America.
In 1890 another man, Eugene Schieffelin, released sixty Sturnus vulgaris, the European starling, in New York's Central Park. Fifty years later, the birds had spread to San Francisco. Today there are more than 200 million starlings in America. All this because Schieffelin wanted the New World to include every bird mentioned by Shakespeare.
Ever since they reengineered the Welland Canal in 1921 to allow more shipping around Niagara Falls, the sea lamprey has infested all the Great Lakes. These parasites suck the blood of the larger fish— trout and salmon— killing them. Then the smaller fish are left with no predators and their population explodes. Then they run out of plankton to eat and starve by the millions.
Either a species learns to control its own population, or something like disease, famine, war, will take care of the issue.

Rico says see his post about the death of China for a real-life equivalent...