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This gruesome disease came to be known as myxomatosis.

Next, in the 1950s, the introduced virus myxomatosis razed the rabbit population, reducing competition for grain and helping cockatoo populations to flourish.

For example, when the rabbits all over England died of the introduced rabbit disease, myxomatosis, the foxes didn’t have much left to eat, so they began killing the farmers’ chickens.

He had coolly—some even said coldly—stood firm during the terrible onslaught of the myxomatosis, ruthlessly driving out every rabbit who seemed to be sickening.

The rabbit population has traditionally gone up and down, he said, often due to outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as myxomatosis, a virus introduced into Europe in the 1950s as an agent to control numbers.