Strange Science News, the Rabbit Edition

First there was one strange rabbit-related science item in today’s news, and before I knew it, I was looking at two. They multiply pretty quickly after all.

From Sweden, we’re learning of a highly unusual scheme to control the rabbit population and generate energy at the same time.

It seems that Stockholm’s public spaces are being overrun with rabbits. While mostly tame, and undeniably cute, their numbers have hopped to a level putting them out of balance with the urban ecosystems. Evidently, the city parks’ flowers, trees and shrubberies have been mercilessly over-munched.

In response, city officials have taken to culling down the rabbit population and incinerating the carcasses as fuel in a heating plant. Not surprisingly, animal rights activists are displeased by the scheme. No explanation has been provided as to why a plan to get into the "Guinness World Records" for the world’s largest batch of hasenpfeffer were not more thoroughly explored.

And secondly, the New York Times reports from Washington state, where the nation’s biggest environmental remediation project proceeds at the former Hanford nuclear facility. The levels of radiation at the site are so pervasive that they have impacted all manner of flora and fauna — and feces. One of the field scientists working on the massive clean-up project recently spent a week seeking out and mapping radioactive rabbit droppings from the vantage point of a helicopter flying 50 feet over the ground surface.

As the Times reports, the radioactive poo is being identified for cleanup on land never used for handling and processing nuclear material. Unfortunately, the burrowing bunnies picked up contamination in soils closer to the actual facility, and left it behind just off-site.

I’m hard pressed to conjure up something that would better indicate the intent to be thorough once this billions-of-dollars, decades-long clean-up project is completed.

Photo courtesy of Sebastian Maier, via Wikimedia Commons