Killer mice ambush endangered seabirds' chicks

Thousands of overgrown house mice are feasting on endangered seabird chicks as they sit helplessly in their nests. The feeding frenzy could spell extinction for populations of birds who breed on the rodent-infested Gough Island in the South Atlantic, conservationists are warning.

The mice are devouring more than one million petrel, albatross and shearwater chicks on the island every year, say researchers from the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.



Before the mice arrived - during the last century through shipwrecks and whaling boats - Gough Island was naturally free of mammalian predators, making it an ideal place for species like albatrosses to nest, says Geoff Hilton, senior RSPB research biologist. Albatross chicks are virtually immobile, and frequently left undefended by their parents, who depart for lengthy ocean feeding excursions. Chicks spend eight months nest-bound, while their parents bring them food.

The Gough Island mice are three times bigger than their UK relatives, weighing in at around 35 grams. Albatross chicks can weigh up to 10 kilograms and stand 1 metre tall – 250 times larger than their rodent attackers.

But the mice are undaunted by their hefty prey and gnaw into live chicks, creating gaping wounds that slowly kill the birds after a few days. The RSPB team thinks that there are around 700,000 mice on the island that have learned to dine on chicks in this gruesome fashion. “It is like a tabby cat attacking a hippopotamus,” says Hilton.

Catastrophe looms
And their voracious appetites may prove disastrous for the island, home to 20 species of seabird. Part of the Tristan da Cunha group, Gough Island is uninhabited by humans and home to 99% of the world’s Tristan albatross and Atlantic petrel populations – the most frequently attacked birds. Just 2000 breeding pairs of Tristan Albatross birds remain. “Gough Island hosts an astonishing community of seabirds and this catastrophe could make many extinct within decades,” says Hilton.



Ross Wanless, from the University of Cape Town’s Percy FitzPatrick Institute, says the mice behaviour on Gough Island is rare and worrying. “There are mice on other South Atlantic islands but Gough is the only site where this is known to be happening. Once one mouse has attacked a chick, the blood seems to attract others.” Film footage has recorded 10 to 15 mice feasting on a single chick.

The researchers report that 700,000 Atlantic petrel chicks - about 60% of the island’s Atlantic petrel population - died before fledging in 2000 and 2001, probably due to mouse predation. The mice are also devouring about 1000 Tristan albatross chicks a year.

“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,” says RSPB biologist Richard Cuthbert.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7721

 

You would think killing off the mice would be a no brainer since the adult birds
are feeding from the ocean and the chicks are nest bound for so long. A little
strategic placement of poison bait and traps.

They can certainly get close enough since they're filming it and all.

 

heh its called food chain?? why mess with it... just means less birbs to poop on everything

 

we did, that is why the birds are dying.

 

Mouse traps? Sounds like a good conservation project. Kill all of the mice, it's for the birds!

 

introduce some snakes to the island.

that'll help

 

I got some buddys here an Alabama that could take care of the mice....all they'd need is a few cases of beer and a couple of shotguns.

 

That was a good one!

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/fi...s/snakeisland/

 

Could your friends take care of this mouse? . . . the most deadly of all rodents on the planet.




It preys on it's victims in the most insidious of ways, brainwashes them with cuteness and controls them for the rest of their lives and forces them to turn their children into zombies too.

It is probably one of the biggest threats to our society, and even the world, and needs to be eradicated.

 

Don't forget Bambi. Bambi needs to die!

 

Bambi does NOT need to die..I saw her the other night dancing around that pole OMG..I was in love...and she loved me also, but then some ***** with $20 came and stole her away..why for the love of god!! WHYYYYY!!!!!

 

Yea she once loved me too!

Then I ran out of ones and she left me too!

 

Bambi's a bimbo and a heart breaker. She can live, but she needs to go away. Trish OTOH....

 

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Correction ... Bambi is still a bimbo in training technically, it's Barbie that's
got the boys hoodwinked ... $$$$$$$$$$ ( and some girls too )

 

Yea but Rosie has always been the most dependable and faithful!