Rabid rabbits hunt snakes

A PAIR of rabid rabbits has been caught killing a series of snakes near Cairns.

For three weeks Armando Del Manso believed his dog was responsible for the dead snakes showing up with teeth marks all over them on his East Barron property’s lawn each morning.

But it turns out it was a pair of rampaging rabbits killing the snakes.

The 42-year-old boilermaker first made the discovery Tuesday night when he spotted the two wild rabbits attacking a king brown snake.

“The snake was raised up in the air in the striking position and the two rabbits worked their way around him and killed him in two minutes,” Mr Del Manso said.

“I’m gobsmacked, it’s absolutely incredible.

“We were watching from the veranda with a spotlight, and I thought, who is going to believe this, they’ll think I’m crazy.”

He said the rabbits lived under a pile of wood in the backyard and were around the same size as a household cat.

“These are killer rabbits man,” he said.

“I’ve never ever seen or heard anything like this happening, it could be a breakthrough.”

A day after discovering the killer rabbits, Mr Del Manso noticed the rabbits had two baby bunnies which he said might explain their attitude towards the snakes.

Two days after first spotting the killer rabbits Mr Del Manso was bitten by a python on the foot while going for a midnight snack in his kitchen at around 2am.

“My partner joked that we should train rabbits to come inside the house to clean out the snakes,” Mr Del Manso said.

“We are absolutely inundated with snakes.”

Senior wildlife manager at the Cairns Wildlife Safari Paul O’Callaghan said he’d never heard of rabbits attacking snakes before but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.

“Animals are capable of learning, and it’s not impossible that these animals have learnt to deal with snakes in this way,” Mr O’Callaghan said.

“They’re certainly taking a risk doing it though.”

Mr De Manso also farms exotic bantams and said with more than 50 chooks he had neveronce lost a fowl to a snake due to the guard rabbits.

[Cairns.com.au]