What’s up doc?! Run Rabbit Run, Myxomatosis and Art Garfunkel
This week's Times Past Column by Jonathan Smith recalls the introduction of myxomatosis in the 1950s to help cull the rabbit population around the world.
In the mid-20th century, rabbit populations worldwide exploded at a rampant rate with the result that many countries adopted extreme measures to curb the nibbling critters. They were glorified in the public's consciousness with cuddly ditties like 'Run Rabbit Run' where the farmer goes shooting for his next plate of rabbit pie in a song that was later altered by the singing duo Flanagan and Allen to ridicule Adolf Hitler.
Another popular rabbit in those days was a cartoon character Bugs Bunny, created by Warner Brothers in the 1930s. Rabbits provided an alternative food source during the 1930s and 1940s during very lean times, and any free form of sustenance was a Godsend. Since 2023 was the Chinese year of the rabbit, I thought that they would make an interesting subject.
Rabbits were introduced to Ireland in the 12th Century by the Normans who reared them to eat and over time some escaped and began to establish themselves in the wild, burrowing their way across Ireland. Some centuries later, the situation became problematic.
Enter the 1950s and their increased presence across the globe had reached plague proportions and, in practically every country, farmers suffered devastation as crops were obliterated by the munching bunnies. Once a respected food source, the rabbit was now considered a pest and it was agreed by nations to cull the species, something which may be frowned upon by the modern world where the encouragement of conservation and climate protection ideals have become urgent priorities. In hindsight, the method used to cull these animals is quite scary.
Local news in this paper from July 1954 spoke of the hay, the weather, and the rabbit as the main topics of conversation that summer. Rabbits were increasingly ‘abhorred’ as the greatest menace on crop-growing farms and discussion among the County Agriculture Committees in Ireland was no longer how but when they would reduce and the means of reduction on everyone's lips was ‘myxomatosis’ and they wondered when the government might decide to approve its use.
The rabbit first came to Australia from Europe in 1788 with English immigrants who brought them to eat. But things rapidly took off in the wrong direction and rabbit populations exploded, until the early half of the 20th century when experts in Australia met to solve the problem. In 1937 Australian scientists selected Wardang Island as a trial site for the controlled release of myxomatosis virus and then began to study its effects in preparation for releasing it nationwide.
By 1950, a strain of the myxoma virus found in the tapeti from Southern America was unleashed in Australia as a biological weapon in the warfare against the feral creatures whose numbers threatened to overtake the human race. The rabbits, who contracted the sickness, died rapidly with close to 100 percent success.
Then, as the next generation of rabbits were born, they became more resistant to the disease and veterinary services were ordered to release less dangerous strains with better transmission rates. An insect borne virus, myxomatosis was first reported in South America in 1898 but the origin was only officially identified in 1942.
In Europe a French doctor living in Switzerland experimented with the virus when he caught two rabbits on his estate and injected it into them. Within a week most of the rabbits were ill and within a month they were dead. Soon after, it spread into Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany, and Spain. In September 1953, it reached the shores of Great Britain where authorities attempted to curb the virus, but to no avail. The Department of Agriculture was apprehensive about introducing myxomatosis to Ireland in case it would spread to other animals.
However, luckily to hand was some local expertise on the matter from Mr J.H. Faris of Corr House, Cornafean, who shared his knowledge of the killer infection that some folk called 'the myxy'. Myxomatosis, he informed the public, had received at least a century of analysis and all attempts, no matter how rigorously tested by the brains in the laboratory and though they tried their darndest, had not resulted in a way for the virus to migrate to sheep, goats, horses, pigs, cattle, cats, dogs, fowl, pigeons, monkeys, humankind, guinea pigs, rats, ferrets, hares and all other manner of animals.
In occasional cases, wrote Faris, the French had reported a rare hare to have contracted the disease and died from it. The Cornafean man hoped his letter to the editor would quell the fear felt by the farmers and townspeople in County Cavan.
Many people acknowledged that the sight of ‘emaciated’ starving rabbits littering the roadsides of Western Europe and Great Britain was a scene utterly ‘repugnant to the ordinary man and woman’. Unfortunately, in 1954 some wiseacre was responsible for illegally introducing myxomatosis to Ireland, which rapidly killed Irish rabbits in every corner of the country. It curbed them for a while, but the farmers' fears again sprung up when new healthy rabbits reappeared around Aughnamullen in the following year, according to the Ballybay news.
In 1954, scientists became concerned, when it dawned on them that myxomatosis could eventually die out and allow the rabbits to return. At Liverpool University, Professor R.E. Glover, in the Veterinary Pathology chair, informed attendees at a conference in Torquay that the Australian testing ground for the virus had shown that where ‘climatic and other conditions were not just right’, there was a threat of myxomatosis disappearing. Elsewhere, in September 1955 a plague of rabbits threatened to steal 'the profit out of sheep raising' in Terra del Fuego, Chile, but they were soon 'beaten back' by the virus.
The rabbits' eventual increased immunity in 1976 was a grave cause of concern that prompted the Celt’s Ballyconnell reporter to announce, ‘rabbits have again become very numerous’ despite their close extinction in the area some years earlier
The disease influenced local ecosystems, for example foxes who once hunted rabbits freely, now turned to the henhouse and fowl as a food source
In the 1970s Myxomatosis was addressed as ‘the white blindness’ in the film Watership Down with its wistful theme song, 'Bright Eyes' sung wistfully by Art Garfunkel
Today these maligned creatures, once featured by Beatrix Potter in her classic children's tales, are facing another threat from the horrific rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD), which has found its way into Europe.
READ MORE TIMES PAST