Hey @gogogadgetupvote! Congratulations on the nominations! I've been kind of out of commission as of late due to vacation and lack of consistent access to computers, but I'll through my card in the hat on this one.

I'll go ahead and share something I just learned today.

Did you know that Australia was once plagued by rabbits?

In the late 1850's, a British settler released approximately 24 European rabbits into the wild in Australia for hunting purposes. For almost 10 years there was nothing out of the ordinary, as far as population growth was concerned. However, in 1867, the population of the rabbits exploded! They began to spread in numbers and territory at a frightening level, destroying the ecology of Australia, creating mass erosion, causing numerous plants and other species to go extinct, and much more. It became such a huge issue, and they spread so quickly, that the government actually offered a reward for any solution that would work in controlling and reducing the rabbit population.

Over the years, many were tried, but with minimal success, as the rabbits continued to spread and reproduce. In the early 1900's, scientists began experimenting with biological diseases meant to target and kill rabbits. While this did end up proving to be effective, it took longer than expected, and results weren't truly seen until closer to 1920. There was another breakthrough in the 1950's when a virus was developed that caused "Rabbit Hemorrhaging Disease" in rabbits. This ended up taking their population from an estimated 600 million, down to about 100 million. However, the remaining rabbits eventually developed an immunity to it and the population managed to increase back to 200-300 million by 1991. Therefore, a new virus was created, proving successful, but only in certain regions, and eventually a more potent strain of it was discovered in 2012. Just this past year, Australian authorities released this strain to try and wipe out the rabbit populations across Australia.

During all of this, scientists have also had to develop vaccines to immunize domestic rabbits and other pets in order to prevent them from contracting the virus as well.

And that was a brief summary of how rabbits plagued Australia and are still a pest to this day!