GIANT mice on Gough Island in the South Atlantic have acquired a sinister taste for fresh albatross. Very fresh albatross. At night the rodents, the descendants of mice that jumped ship in the 19th century, creep out and devour the defenceless seabird chicks alive.
Gough Island is one of the most important seabird colonies in the world. As well as housing the endangered Tristan albatross, it is home to 99 per cent of the world鈥檚 Atlantic petrels, which are classified as vulnerable, and 18 other species of seabird. The mice are scoffing some 700,000 of these chicks a year 鈥� about 60 per cent of the population.
鈥淚ronically, albatrosses evolved to nest on Gough because they had no mammal predators 鈥� that is why they are so vulnerable,鈥� said Geoff Hilton, a biologist at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, in Bedfordshire, UK.
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The British government has allocated 拢62,000 to the RSPB to find a way of tackling the crisis.
