15/04/2025
In 1859, Thomas Austin, an English settler in Victoria, Australia, released 24 European rabbits on his estate. He wanted to make the landscape feel more like England and to have animals available for sport hunting.
What he didn’t expect was how well the rabbits would thrive in Australia’s mild climate, with plenty of food and no natural predators to keep them in check. Their population exploded. By the 1920s, it’s estimated that the rabbit population ballooned to more then 10 billion — all from that original group of 24.
The rabbits caused immense damage to the environment, destroying crops and native vegetation. Their burrowing led to soil erosion, and their grazing pushed many native animals toward extinction by removing critical food sources. Australia tried everything — from hunting, poisoning, building the Rabbit-Proof Fence (which stretched over 3,000 kilometers), and introducing diseases like myxomatosis — to try and control the outbreak.
This event is still taught as a cautionary tale of what happens when humans introduce species into ecosystems without understanding the consequences. It’s one of the largest and fastest population explosions of a mammal ever recorded — and the ultimate example of “breeding like rabbits.”
