A recent study reveals that one Englishman is responsible for Australia’s rampant rabbit infestation.
In October 1859, Thomas Austin, an English pioneer in Australia, brought 24 rabbits to his land just outside of Melbourne to use as hunting targets.
Now, the rabbit population in Australia is estimated to reach around 200 million, wreaking havoc on farmers and houses.
Researchers have used DNA fingerprinting to track the origin of Australia’s invasive rabbit population back to Austin’s family estate and birthplace in Somerset, conclusively placing the blame on the Englishman.
Rabbits are not native to Australia; they were imported from England throughout the 19th century. However, it was Austin’s efforts that sparked a statewide invasion.
They are the most damaging agricultural and environmental imported animal pests in Australia, costing up to AU$1 billion each year.
They threaten the survival of uncommon and endangered native species, such as the larger bilby and the yellow-footed rock wallaby, by causing significant land degradation and soil erosion.
A multinational team led by the University of Cambridge and the CIBIO Institute in Portugal conducted the new study.
In their research, they state that the introduction of rabbits to Australia initiated one of the most famous biological invasions in history.
“Here, we demonstrate that despite numerous introductions over 70 years, this invasion was triggered by a single release of a small number of animals that spread across thousands of kilometers of the continent.”
We discovered genetic evidence supporting historical descriptions that they were English rabbits imported in 1859 by a settler called Thomas Austin and tracked the origin of the invasive population back to his birthplace in England.
The European rabbit’s colonization of Australia is one of the most infamous and destructive biological invasions in recorded history.
Five domesticated animals transported to Sydney in 1788 by the First Fleet were the first to introduce rabbits to continental Australia.
Before 1859, at least 90 other importations were made, but none of these populations became invasive.
The rabbit problem in Australia did not begin in earnest until 1859, due to the efforts of Thomas Austin and his brother William.
At Thomas’s request, William dispatched a shipment of wild rabbits captured on the family’s land in Baltonsborough, Somerset, together with domestic rabbits, on the ship Lightning on October 6, 1859.
On Christmas Day of that year, 24 rabbits arrived in Melbourne and were sent to Thomas’s estate, Barwon Park.
In all, 13 animals were dispatched from England even though 24 arrived in Australia, implying that they were bred before or during the 80 days of the journey.
Unsurprisingly, they continued to procreate like rabbits, as the phrase goes. Within three years, the 1862 Chronicle reported that there were thousands of “Austin rabbits.”
Austin told the Geelong Advertiser in 1865 that he had killed 20,000 rabbits on his land, citing the “amazing fecundity of the English rabbit.”
Within 50 years, rabbits would spread across the entire continent at a rate of more than 60 miles (100km) each year, like a ‘grey blanket’.
It is the quickest colonization rate ever recorded for an imported mammal.
The researchers examined historical documents and fresh genetic data acquired from 187 European rabbits for their study (Oryctolagus cuniculus).
Between 1865 and 2018, the majority of these rabbits were captured in the wild in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Britain, and France.
Researchers were able to trace the origins of the creatures back to 1859, when Austin’s family collected rabbits in Baltonsborough, Somerset.
Recent investigations contested the concept that Australia’s rabbits came from a single origin, instead claiming that invasive rabbits arose from numerous distinct incursions.
However, they failed to collect samples from ancestral European and domestic populations, which was essential for determining the origin of Australia’s rabbits.
Dr. Joel Alves of the University of Oxford and CIBIO Institute, the study’s principal author, said that despite the countless introductions across Australia, a single batch of English rabbits was responsible for this disastrous biological invasion, the repercussions of which are still being felt today.
This serves as a warning that the acts of a single individual or a small group of individuals can have terrible environmental consequences.
The researchers also discovered that when the rabbits moved away from Barwon Park, genetic diversity decreased, and the frequency of uncommon genetic variants that occur in quickly expanding populations increased.
The researchers are less convinced as to why Austin’s rabbits thrived when earlier populations did not, although it may be because Austin’s original sample of 13 rabbits consisted primarily of wild rabbits.
The rabbits introduced to Australia before 1859 were frequently characterized as exhibiting docility, colorful coats, and floppy ears, characteristics generally associated with domestic breeds but absent in wild rabbits.
Wild rabbits have a larger fear reaction than domestic rabbits, and hence, among other considerations, they would have likely had superior survival strategies in the Australian wild than farmed rabbits.
‘Wild rabbits are more suited to evade predators, and, likely, they are also better adapted to nutrient-poor diets,’ research author Mike Letnic of the CIBIO Institute told.
‘This is because when animals are domesticated, people select for features such as tameness and the ability to gain body fat, which may be detrimental to survival in the wild.
Also, domesticated animals are not selected to avoid predators or thrive on nutrient-poor diets.
The current study’s DNA findings reveal that at least some of the animals were truly wild – something already supported by recollections from Joan Palmer, William Austin’s granddaughter.
In the 20th century, Joan Palmer recalled that her grandfather had struggled to find wild bunnies for Thomas because they were not plentiful in the Baltonsborough area.
She wrote in her 1993 book ‘Memories of a Riverina Childhood: ‘It was only with much struggle that he managed to get six.
These were immature animals removed from their nests and domesticated.
To make up the amount, he purchased seven grey rabbits that the villagers either kept as pets or ate.
This research was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
