And there are things that are important for us to know about the Mississippi River now. It has been invaded by carp, bighead carp, black carp, grass carp that leap into the air, as well as zebra mussels, gobies, walking snakehead fish, all imported for various reasons—aquariums, food markets—and then loosed or escaped into the river. Wild hogs, which were imported there by Spanish explorers in the 1500s, and the big mammalian nutria, which were brought to the US for fur in the late nineteenth century, spread disease, destroy levees, and chomp up crops. The Mississippi River has been called the
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