The Falklands had only one native quadruped mammal, a wolf, the Warrah. In 1876, the last warrah was killed at Shallow Bay, in Hill Cove camp, West Falkands.

When settlers came to the islands starting with the French at Port Louis in January 1764, followed by the Spanish colonists, they brought animals with them, domestic and familiar. Cattle, horses, pigs and goats. Wild animals, hares and rabbits were introduced and inadvertently rodents, which arrived on ships. Where man went rats surely followed. Sealers also released goats and pigs animals on small islands as a source of available food, and their ships too would have surely been carrying rodents. They all flourished and numbers quickly increased until in 1833 Captain Fitzroy reported that although they had been killed indiscriminately by the crews of sealing vessels and the settlers, there were still many thousands of wild cattle, some thousand horses, and droves of pigs, perfectly wild, upon the eastern large island (East Falklands) while upon Carcass, Saunders and others there were numbers of goats and pigs.

Photographic credits: Hare-Robert Maddocks, Reindeer-Nyree Heathman, Guanaco-LakovFillimonov/Shutterstock.com, fox Andrea Izzotti/ Shutterstock.com, mouse Szasz-Fabian Jozsef/Shutterstock.com,

Sources include: A Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Beagle-Captain Robert Fitzroy,R.N.

Photographs and Images Copyright: The images on this site have been bought under licence or have been used with the permission of their owners. They may not be copied or downloaded in any form without their owner's consent.