Japanese island eradicates rabbit-killing mongoose

Tokyo: Japan has wiped out all mongooses on a subtropical island, officials said, after the animals ignored the venomous snakes they were brought in t...

Tokyo: Japan has wiped out all mongooses on a subtropical island, officials said, after the animals ignored the venomous snakes they were brought in to hunt and preyed on endangered local rabbits instead.

About 30 of the venom-resistant predators were released on Amami Oshima, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in the late 1970s to keep down the population of habu, a pit viper whose bite can be deadly to humans.

However, the snakes are mostly active at night when mongooses prefer to sleep and the toothy mammals turned their ravenous appetites to local Amami rabbits, drastically reducing their numbers.

"It is said that the mongooses, which are active during the day, rarely came into contact with the nocturnal habu snakes," a local official told AFP.

The rabbits only live on Amami Oshima and one other island and are listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list.