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Comment by stareatgoats | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be a recurring occurrence in Australia. China is the other country to experience this with some regularity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_plagues_in_Australia

Interestingly, Australia was home to another, similar explosion of small mammals with high reproductive rates and no or few natural enemies: The rabbit plagues. This seems however largely to have been contained with the release of several viruses that targets rabbits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_plagues_in_Australia

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There is the Dingo, which interesting enough was introduced a few thousand years ago and is not native to Australia. Then some time in the 1800's they introduced 24 rabbits because they thought it would be fun to hunt and that didn't turn out to well. And if that wasn't enough they introduced Camels which now number in the millions. I am wondering what's next?

You forgot cane toads, foxes, cats, wild pigs/boar, water buffalo, and horses. All are non-native and cause damage to the native animals and environment.

People have introduced a lot of animals for their own purposes which are not native to the continent and are now pests in some way.

Deer, donkeys, dogs (domestic distinct from Dingoes), goats, plus multiple bird and fish species, insects and plants:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species_in_Australia

> the Dingo, which interesting enough was introduced a few thousand years ago and is not native to Australia.

This is a pretty stunning standard. By this standard, most of Africa has no native population. Most life anywhere would not qualify as "native".

a few thousand years is not that long; humans have been in africa for millions of years and australia for at least 45k. interestingly the dingo looks very similar to many other breeds of feral dogs across the world, from the carolina dog on the american atlantic coast to the jungle-dwelling new guinea singing dog. its form is something like the primordial state of c. familiaris, with probable climactic adaptations.

Well, humans are only considered to date back about 200,000 years, so "millions of years" is stretching it.

Hominids have been in Africa for millions of years, but the Bantu Expansion is just a few thousand years old. It is younger than recorded history -- we have Egyptian records of the peoples to their south, with whom they traded; those people are extinct today. The Bantus reached South Africa at about the same time Europeans did! They colonized it much more successfully, though, largely wiping out the Khoisan who were there before.

anatomically modern humans are thought to date to about 200kya, but early humans like h. erectus go back much further

And literally mixomatosis was researched and “created” circa 1850 to get rid of said Australian rabbits. According to my failing memory, it goes like this: In 2 years 95% Australian rabbits died, and 5% were resisting. Obviously the population regrew. And the researcher tried to bring it back home in UK to get rid of the rabbits in his garden. He succeeded... to kill 95% rabbits of England. Which regrew from the resisting 5%. And same from France.

It’s the disease that makes rabbit have red eyes (very easy to spot from far away). But beware, I’m storytelling from memory, huge details must be wrong.

I just learned about this recently. This is the guy who introduced it into the UK population when trying to reduce the population on his estate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul-F%C3%A9lix_Armand-Delille

I’m not sure ‘contained’ is quite the right word to use here. Perhaps populations might be less than what they used to be, but where I live in Sydney, you can barely walk across the road without seeing at least a couple of rabbits. We certainly see more of them than we do of wallabies, possums or any other of the stereotypical Australian animals.

The foxes were keeping the rabbits in check here. Neighbor killed the local foxes, saving their chickens and the smaller marsupials. But the biggest winner was the rabbits where we have dozens and before saw none.

Yeah nah, I live in Melbourne and there are rabbits EVERYWHERE

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