Dust Bunnies

In the slums of Owendo, a suburb of the Gabonese capital of Libreville, a strange case of urban adaptation has been occurring over the last three centuries – “city” rabbits.

These rabbits had initially been introduced to the area by Dutch traders in 1637, when an ill-fated expedition was forced to abandon all of its cargo after its hull was punctured during an attack by Turkish pirates. The rabbits were going to be used as a sort of natural pesticide – the tea crops the Dutch were growing in Sumatra were beset by a vine that was ruining the crops, and it had been discovered that the rabbits would devour the vine while leaving the tea crop intact.

Owendo was only recently settled at that point, and the rabbits managed to carve out a niche for themselves amongst the genets, Gambian pouch rats and other predators moving in to the area. Being rabbits, of course their first (and only) thought was to procreate, which they did with abandon; luckily for them, they managed to build up a sizable and diverse enough population that when predators finally did move in to the area in greater numbers the rabbit population was able to survive. Today there are approximately 40,000 rabbits living near Owendo, nearly the size of the human population.

They inhabit markets, warehouses, the local dump – anywhere and everywhere they can possibly find food (the other thought on rabbits’ minds). They are considered pests, vermin, and are treated as such, a nuisance second only to the booming pigeon population.

Although scientifically they can still be classified as dutch rabbits, evolution is occurring, and a small movement is underway to classify these rabbits as oryctolagus harensis, dust rabbit.