Hawaii Released 72 Mongooses to Kill Rats in 1883 — Scientists Found Why It Never Worked

In 1883, Hawaii imported 72 mongooses from Jamaica to kill the rats eating its sugarcane. A hundred and forty-three years later, the islands have mongooses on four islands — and they still have rats. You've probably heard why: mongooses hunt by day, rats come out at night, so the two animals never met. It's one of the most repeated stories in the history of invasive species, and when you go back to the records from the time, it doesn't hold up the way it's told. Newspapers in Hawaii in 1898 and 1921 reported that rat damage had actually fallen. In this video you'll find out what sugar planters were really facing in 1883 and why importing a predator looked like the obvious answer, what happened to the nēnē and the Hawaiian petrel on islands where nothing had hunted the ground for millions of years, why a generalist predator can never control a rodent population no matter what time it wakes up, and why two islands in the chain still have none — and treat every sighting as an emergency. The tidy version of this story blames one stupid oversight. The real one is a mistake people are still available to make. Topics: mongoose Hawaii, small Indian mongoose, 1883, invasive species, sugarcane, nene, Hawaiian petrel, Kauai, island extinction, biological control, rats, Jonathan Tucker #Hawaii #Mongoose #InvasiveSpecies #Wildlife #Islands #History