VIRUS FOR RABBITS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 April 1938, Page 3

VIRUS FOR RABBITS

EXPERIMENTAL TESTS CARRIED OUT IN AUSTRALIA

AN ERADICATION PROBLEM

Preliminary experiments in Australia have confirmed results in Europe and the United States of America that a virus, which may contribute materially to the rabbit eradication problem in the Dominion, is capable of causing disease only in the European rabbit. The wild rabbit of Australia is the introduced wild rabbit of Europe. Field tests with the virus are now in progress at Wardang Island, off the coast of South Australia.

The virus gives rise to a disease in rabbits termed myxomatosis, and although the evidence of workers overseas is conclusively that all animals except the rabbit are resistant to the casual virus, it was considered advisable to obtain further confirmation in Australia.

Dr L. 13. Bull and Mr C. C. Dickinson, of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, have published results showing that none of the following tested animals showed any development of the disease:. Sheep, goat, horse, pig, cattle, dog, cat, guinea pig, mice, rat, ferret, silger-grey opossum, rufous-bellied wallaby, black-tailed wallaby, Bennett’s wallaby, rufous ratkangaroo, common wombat, fruit bat, water bat, southern blue-tongued lizard, bearded dragon (jew lizard), lace lizard (goanna), white-backed magpie sulphur-crested cockatoo, galah, wedgetail eagle and the grey teal.

It was found that the virus was incapable of producing disease in any of these animals, which totalled 119, and even in the closely-related hare. Also, it was incapable of remaining alive in the tissues of these animals for more than a short period. On the other hand, not one animal out of 369 wild rabbits recovered from the disease, but there were two recoved cases with the 95 tame rabbits tested. The rabbits died from two to four days after developing the first symptoms. Most of these observations were made with rabbits that had contracted the disease by contact with one rabbit.