New here and have a question already !

[STYRBJORN]

Originally Posted by vole-woman

Is it OK for other animals to eat mixy rabbits?

jaxcooper, I'm so sorry your first post here is such a troubled one. Nature can be very sad, but also really wonderful, and sitting watching rabbits play in the warm evenings (healthy ones, I mean) is a treat.

Mixy cannot be transferred by eating infected rabbits The only thing I would like to stress here is that there is no cure and no treatment for infection by the myxoma virus. Brutal though it may seem, the kindest thing to do for a mixy rabbit is kill it as quick and clean as possible. If you take one to a vet he/she will "put it to sleep". Why prolong the suffering?

Nature really is red in tooth and claw.

[thunder]

Originally Posted by STYRBJORN

Mixy cannot be transferred by eating infected rabbits The only thing I would like to stress here is that there is no cure and no treatment for infection by the myxoma virus. Brutal though it may seem, the kindest thing to do for a mixy rabbit is kill it as quick and clean as possible. If you take one to a vet he/she will "put it to sleep". Why prolong the suffering?

It is not strictly true that there is no cure for infection by the myxoma virus. Whilst in the 1950s mortality in Britain was around 99%, a 1992 paper estimated that mortality had declined to between 5 and 33%. It is considered likely that mortality levels will continue to decline.

henrya

[Kayleigh]

Hi and welcome to WAB..
you did the right thing as henrya said it could get over it as others on WAB have said they have known rabbits that seemed to recover..
If it doesn't it will fall prey to something else.

[Nutty]

myxomatosis originated in Brazil and was imported to Australia to control the huge rabbit population they had there. A French landowner then brought the disease to France to control the rabbits on his land and it quickly spread. It came to our Britain in the early 1950s. We always have an outbreak on the farm in Autumn but I don't think there are any myxi rabbits on the farm at the moment. It is a horrible disease but the rabbits here seem to be showing signs of immunity.

[Hobjob]

Originally Posted by thunder

It is not strictly true that there is no cure for infection by the myxoma virus. Whilst in the 1950s mortality in Britain was around 99%, a 1992 paper estimated that mortality had declined to between 5 and 33%. It is considered likely that mortality levels will continue to decline.

henrya

Interesting - but was recovery common after the eyes had become infected, or was the recovery in the milder cases, possibly even those only detected by lab tests?

Did the paper say why this was so? Partial immunity / variation in pathogenicity of the virus?

I remember the bad epidemic of the 50s when every rabbit one saw seemed infected, now it does seem to affect some, and in the next hedge they will be OK.

[STYRBJORN]

To the best of my knowledge, the stage where the eyes are affected is the "point of no return". Also, if a kit is showing such advanced symptoms at such a young age, it has very little chance. It really is a race between the myxoma virus, a fox or carrion crow, and the dreadful bacterial infections to which myxoma makes its victims vulnerable. Then take into account the fact that transmission tends to occur below ground, either by direct contact or by fleabite, and it is best to dispatch the animal humanely as quickly as possible.

It is probable that two mechanisms are at work in the reduced virulence and lethality. When the virus first got loose in Europe, it wiped out 95% of wild rabbits. (As a matter of interest, it also damn near wiped out the Iberian lynx. The main diet of these handsome predators is rabbits, and the lynx was decimated by starvation.) The surviving rabbits were the ones with natural resistance, and they passed it on to their progeny. At the same time, the virus is likely to have mutated to a less virulent form. A parasite that kills its host too quickly won't last long. As said, the survival rate, is now ~35%.

The virus was first identified in lab rabbits in Uruguay on the late 19thC. In American rabbits of the genus Sylvilagus, cottontail rabbits, it causes minor skin tumours which do not affect survival rates. When it was first released in Australia to control the European rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus it killed within as few as 2 days, few victims surviving more than 4 days. Whan introduced to Europe from Australia the survival time was around 14 days from infection, so the virus was already mutating.

The story has so many aspects that foreshadow later events with well-intentioned intervention that Santayana comes inevitably to mind. "Those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it."

Ric