Science: Better Without Flopsy (

When myxomatosis was accidentally imported* into England in 1953, the homeland of Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail was horrified. Every rabbit from Penzance to the Orkneys, it seemed, was dying or dead. Stricken animals with grotesquely swollen heads hobbled aimlessly on highways, and carcasses lay stinking in ditches.

The London Times was swamped with letters from outraged bunny lovers. Some of the loudest objectors were fox hunters. In the absence of their preferred prey, ravenous British foxes turned to moles, rats, blackberries and garbage cans. They lost the stamina they used to build up chasing rabbits, no longer led hunters off on the long, steady chases of old. Instead, they developed a tendency to head for the nearest suburb, leaving hunters embarrassedly clattering through backyards and garbage dumps. Another curious side effect: British buzzards, deprived of protein once obtained from rabbit carrion, suffered loss of fertility.

But many Britons have come to realize that they are better off without the rabbits, which once destroyed 40% of the nation’s crops. Unnibbled, vegetation has rioted and farmers’ incomes have risen. Oak saplings have taken hold where they had no chance for centuries, and for the first time in memory, wild roses are blossoming over chalk cliffs.

The present number of the animals is comfortably low. But the survivors are multiplying like rabbits, and their offspring are apt to be resistant to myxomatosis. Forgetting their sentimental attachment to the rabbits of child literature, platoons of Englishmen, organized in 200 government-approved rabbit-clearance societies, are now using nets, cyanide, traps and shotguns to maintain the status quo.

* Originally a South American infection, the virus of myxomatosis was first used in 1950 to cut down the Australian rabbit population. In 1952 a French pediatrician—out to get the pests who had been nibbling on his estate—imported cultures, inoculated two wild rabbits, started an epidemic that spread rapidly through Europe and Great Britain.