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Apr22 pada 8:11 PM
Meet Australia’s Easter Bunny: the Long-Eared Greater Bilby
The greater bilby. Credit: Queensland State Government
Easter in Australia is pretty much the same as Easter elsewhere in
the world. We do Easter egg hunts and put sad-looking yellow chickens
with loose eyespots on display in straw nests and eat nothing but
chocolate for three days straight. But there’s a war going on, and the
Easter Bunny is at the centre of it.
The relationship between rabbits and Australia has always been
strained at best. They were introduced in the 18th century with the
First Fleet and following an 1859 release, spread out and bred like,
well, rabbits. Since then, they’ve made themselves at home across 4.5
million square kilometres in the southern two thirds of the continent,
and they’ve been wreaking havoc wherever they go. They’ve have been
blamed as the single biggest factor in the loss of our native species
thanks to competition of resources, alteration of the structure and
composition of vegetation, and land degradation. And if you want to make
friends with an Australian farmer, do not tell them about how cute you
think bunnies are.
Will
the real Easter Bunny please stand up. Rabbits around a waterhole at
the myxomatosis trial enclosure on Wardang Island in 1938. Credit:
National Archives of Australia
In 1907, a 1,833 kilometre-long rabbit-proof fence was built in
Western Australia in an attempt to contain them. It took six years to
build, and when it was completed, it was the single longest unbroken
fence in the world. It was joined by two additional fences, but they
never quite did the job. In the 1950s, the myxoma virus, which causes
myxomatosis, was introduced and reduced the rabbit population from 600
million to 100 million in two years. Resistance crept up around the
1970s and ‘80s, and in 1996, the calicivirus was introduced. It had
escaped quarantine the previous year to kill 10 million rabbits in the
space of eight weeks. The deaths from both viruses are slow and
horrendous, causing skin tumours, blindness, paralysis and bleeding from
the eyes. Unfortunately this is what it took to protect our native
species.
All of which is to say it’s not surprising that Australia would allow
a rival Easter representative to get a look in, and this one’s just as
fluffy, just as long-eared, and while it technically can’t hop, it sure
can gallop.
“They look like they’ve been stuck together by a committee,” bilby conservationist, Tony Friend, once told the ABC.
“Huge ears that belong to a rabbit, soft grey fur, a tail that’s stuck
out the back like a tufted pencil, and they gallop around like a rocking
horse. They’re so different to any other animals.”
Two bilby joeys born at Perth Zoo in April 2012. Credit: Perth Zoo
It’s thought that around 20 million years ago, the bilby branched off
from its closest relative, the bandicoot. Today, it retains its very
bandicoot-like elongated muzzle, but has a much longer tail with a
lovely white tip, bigger ears, and a softer, silkier pelt. Growing up to
55cm long, they’re about the size of a rabbit, and they’re just as good
at digging – they routinely construct spiral-shaped burrows up to three
metres long and almost two metres deep. Their burrows need to be this
deep because bilbies are desert-dwellers, keeping cool underground
during the day and foraging for food after dark. They’re opportunistic
feeders, taking up just about anything with their long, anteater-like
tongues, including seeds, fungi, bulbs, grasshoppers, beetles, spiders
and termites.
They’re also great at sex. Bilbies are able to breed from just six
months old, and can produce around eight offspring every year. Their
mating sessions can last for 18 hours at a time. The female’s gestation
period lasts just two weeks, after which her bean-sized newborns will
wriggle their way to her backward-opening pouch, which prevents soil
from getting in when she’s burrowing. The still-developing joeys will
live here for around 80 days, growing stronger and furrier, until
they’re big enough to emerge and live in the burrow.
A chocolate Easter Bilby. Credit: iStockPhoto
Way back in 1968, a nine-year-old girl named Rose-Marie Dusting wrote
a story called “Billy The Aussie Easter Bilby”. When she turned 20, she
published it as a book, and over the following decade, her story
inspired much public interest in this peculiar little marsupial. In
1991, the Foundation for Rabbit-Free Australia
began an Easter Bilby campaign to replace the Easter Bunny, and while
the campaign has since died down politically, a number of chocolate
makers still distribute bilbies with their chocolate bunnies each
Easter. And there’s arguably no better way of getting our kids
interested in our native wildlife than covering them in chocolate.
This is especially important, because our bilbies are struggling. Two hundred years ago, the greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis),
occupied more than 70% of mainland Australia. Since then, it’s
disappeared from 80% of its former range, with a few remaining
populations scattered in arid and semi-arid areas in Western Australia,
the Northern Territory, and Queensland. The lesser bilby (Macrotis leucura) went extinct some time around the 1950s.
While the greater bilby’s numbers across Australia are enough for it
to be considered ‘vulnerable’, in Queensland it’s classified as
endangered, with a wild population of between just 600 and 700
individuals living within a 100,000 square kilometre area.
Reintroduction programs have been carried out by various state
governments in earnest, with populations released successfully into
reserves in South Australia, Western Australia, and Queensland. The
global population is thought to be sitting at around 10,000 individuals.
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