[00:00.49]In the early days of the settlement of Australia, enterprising settlers unwisely introduced the European rabbit.
[00:08.59]This rabbit had no natural enemies in the Antipodes, so that it multiplied with that promiscuous abandon characteristic of rabbits.
[00:19.30]It overran a whole continent.
[00:21.79]It caused devastation by burrowing and by devouring the herbage which might have maintained millions of sheep and cattle.
[00:30.36]Scientists discovered that this particular variety of rabbit (and apparently no other animal) was susceptible to a fatal virus disease, myxomatosis.
[00:42.05]By infecting animals and letting them loose in the burrows, local epidemics of this disease could be created.
[00:49.53]Later it was found that there was a type of mosquito which acted as the carrier of this disease and passed it on to the rabbits.
[00:58.40]So while the rest of the world was trying to get rid of mosquitoes, Australia was encouraging this one.
[01:05.43]It effectively spread the disease all over the continent and drastically reduced the rabbit population.
[01:12.21]It later became apparent that rabbits were developing a degree of resistance to this disease, so that the rabbit population was unlikely to be completely exterminated.
[01:23.64]There were hopes, however, that the problem of the rabbit would become manageable.
[01:29.04]Ironically, Europe, which had bequeathed the rabbit as a pest to Australia, acquired this man-made disease as a pestilence.
[01:38.34]A French physician decided to get rid of the wild rabbits on his own estate and introduced myxomatosis.
[01:45.46]It did not, however, remain within the confines of his estate.
[01:49.85]It spread through France,
[01:52.07]Where wild rabbits are not generally regarded as a pest but as sport and a useful food supply,
[01:59.62]and it spread to Britain where wild rabbits are regarded as a pest but where domesticated rabbits, equally susceptible to the disease, are the basis of a profitable fur industry.
[02:12.01]The question became one of whether Man could control the disease he had invented.
