[Mr.Buttocks]

[url=http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13394546,00.html:63ac2]Link to article...[/url:63ac2]

[quote:63ac2]
Giant mice are eating huge albatross chicks alive, gnawing at them for days until the birds die.

The mice, on Gough Island in the South Atlantic, have grown to three times the size of those in the UK and attack at night.

Expert Ross Wanless said "Once one mouse has attacked a chick, the blood seems to attract others. They gnaw into the chick's body, create a gaping wound and the chick weakens then dies over several days."

According to scientists, they are devouring more than one million petrel, shearwater and albatross chicks on the island - the most southerly of the Tristan da Cunha group - every year.

The World Heritage site is the most important seabird colony in the world and Dr Geoff Hilton, a Senior Research Biologist at the RSPB, said the "catastrophe could make many extinct within decades".

Dr Hilton said: "We think there are about 700,000 mice, which have somehow learned to eat chicks live, much like blue tits learned to peck milk bottle tops.

"The albatross chicks weigh up to ten kilograms and ironically albatrosses evolved to nest on Gough because it had no mammal predators - that is why they are so vulnerable. The mice weigh just 35 grams, it is like a tabby cat attacking a hippopotamus."

Another expert said "The albatross chicks spend eight months sitting waiting for food from their parents.

"They are nearly a metre tall and 250 times the weight of the mice but are largely immobile and cannot defend themselves.

"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."[/quote:63ac2]




"The result is fucking carnage"

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