Common European Rabbit - one of the most dangerous creatures of nature

Unpretentious and rapidly proliferating rabbit was used by sailors since the Great Geographical Discoveries like living canned: rabbits were imported and released into the wild in the islands that lie on the main sea routes, both abundant and easily accessible food for follow ships. On these islands, in the absence of natural predators, rabbits causes irreparable damage to the local flora, eating rare endemic plants. Such impunity rabbits, coupled with the voracity and numerous, have led to the fact that some Pacific islands activities of these animals has caused severe soil erosion and, as a consequence, the destruction of the coastal zone, where centuries of nesting seabirds. The greatest damage caused activity of rabbits in Australia, which in 1859 had brought only two dozen of these creatures, and already by 1900 the number of feral descendants of more than 20 million copies. In the absence of predators, can somehow control the population, rabbits are harmful to local fauna and flora by eating relic vegetation and crowding out native species, which can not compete with the rapidly mushrooming rodents. According to various estimates, the activity of rabbits led to the extinction of 1/8 of the total number of species of Australian mammals.

Source: www.esquire.ru

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