Kerguelen is one of the most remote places on the planet, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean with a few dozen native vascular plant species and almost no mammals native to its shores. In 1874, visitors on an expedition to observe that year's transit of Venus released a few rabbits from Europe on Grande Terre, the archipelago's main island, intending them as a future food source for later expeditions. Whether or not any visitors ever returned to eat them, the rabbits themselves were anything but forgotten: freed from predators and competitors, they multiplied into a population that would go on to reshape the islands' ecosystems.
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