Monster Mice
- From: "Rodjk #613" <rjkardo@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 29 Jul 2005 06:22:03 -0700
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8739804/
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - â??Monster miceâ?? are eating much larger
albatross chicks alive, threatening rare bird species on a remote South
Atlantic island seen as the worldâ??s most important seabird colony.
Conservationists say the avian massacre is occurring on Gough Island in
the South Atlantic, a British territory about 1,000 miles southwest of
Cape Town and home to more than 10 million birds.
â??Gough Island hosts an astonishing community of seabirds and this
catastrophe could make many extinct within decades,â?? said Geoff
Hilton, a senior research biologist with Britainâ??s Royal Society for
the Protection of Birds.
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â??We think there are about 700,000 mice, which have somehow learned to
eat chicks alive,â?? he said in a statement.
The researchers believe the mice are devouring more than one million
petrel, shearwater and albatross chicks on Gough Island every year.
The island is home to 99 percent of the worldâ??s Tristan albatross and
Atlantic petrel populations â?? the birds most often attacked. Just
2,000 Tristan albatross pairs remain.
Like cat attacking a hippo
â??The albatross chicks weigh up to 10 kg (22 pounds) and ... the mice
weigh just 35 grams; it is like a tabby cat attacking a
hippopotamus,â?? Hilton said.
The house mice â?? believed to have made their way to Gough decades ago
on sealing and whaling ships â?? have evolved to about three times
their normal size.
This is a common phenomenon on island habitats â?? for reasons much
debated among scientists â?? where small animal species often grow
larger while big species such as elephants display â??dwarfismâ?? and
become smaller.
In the case of the mice of Gough Island, their remarkable growth seems
to have been given a boost by a vast reservoir of fresh meat and
protein.
The rapacious rodents gnaw into the bodies of the defenseless and
flightless chicks, leaving a gaping wound that leads to an agonizing
death. Scientists say once one mouse attacks the blood seems to draw
others to the feast.
The albatross â??are nearly a meter tall and 250 times the weight of
the mice but are largely immobile and cannot defend themselves,â?? RSPB
researcher Richard Cuthbert said in the statement. â??Without predators
this would not be a problem but for a carnivorous mouse population on
one of the wettest and windiest places on earth it is an easy meal of
almost unimaginable quality. The result is carnage.â??
â??Ecologically naiveâ?? birds
While predation by oversized mice is unusual, birds on small islands
are especially vulnerable to extinction from human activities such as
the introduction of alien species.
This is because many birds that have evolved on isolated islands with
no predators have become what biologists term â??ecologically naiveâ??
â?? meaning they do not recognize danger from other animals.
Flightless species â?? or chicks that cannot yet fly â?? are especially
at risk. The predatory nature of the mice was confirmed by researchers
from the RSPB and the University of Cape Town.
Scientists suspect the mice are also eating the eggs and chicks of the
rare, ground-nesting Gough bunting, a small finch found nowhere else in
the world.
Gough Island is the most southerly of the Tristan da Cunha group. There
are 22 bird species nesting on the island of which 20 are seabirds.
.
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