killing

‘Avatar’ is one of the most profitable films in history. And yet Disney is considering killing the saga

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James Cameron’s trilogy has generated 6.7 billion dollars at the box office. Despite this, the future of the two remaining sequels is up in the air, Disney is considering making the following films cheaper, and the theme park attraction that was announced with all honors a few months ago may never be built. The numbers. The figures for ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’, the third installment of the franchise, are objectively colossal: 404 million grosses in the domestic market, 1,085 million in the rest of the world, third highest-grossing title of 2025. A success for any current Hollywood franchise, but at this point we are all clear that James Cameron’s saga is not a typical product. The low. The first way of reduce enthusiasm is by comparing the collection with its precedents. The first installment, from 2009, is still the highest grossing film in history, with 2,920 million dollars. The second, ‘The Sense of Water’, is the third with 2,340 million. Compared to those figures, ‘Fire and Ashes’ is no less than a billion short. It remains a good business (350 million, plus 150 in marketing), but It’s not even the highest-grossing movie of 2025since it was beaten by ‘Zootopia 2’, also from Disney, and by ‘Ne Zha 2‘. The Wrap has made an in-depth analysis of the topic and highlights the opinion of Paul Dergarabedian, head of market trends at Comscore. The analyst states that “‘Fire and Ashes’ grossed half that of the first film. And the ticket prices in 2009 were not those of 2025.” In March, during the Saturn Awards, Cameron collected trophies for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Science Fiction Film for the third ‘Avatar’ and recognized that “To be perfectly clear, we have not even made a decision to move forward at this time.” Short and cheap. The Wrap is also the medium that I spoke with insiders from Disney who confirm that internal conversations are being held to make the next deliveries “shorter and cheaper.” The release dates of the fourth and fifth films (December 2029 and December 2031), and the answer to how to reduce costs without extirpating the identity of ‘Avatar’ is not easy to elucidate. Why are they so expensive? Some details of the process that illustrate why “cheaper” can be a complication: for example, the production involves at least two complete shoots: one motion capture with actors and another, mostly digital, to define the staging, the camera movements and all the elements of the computer-generated universe. According to Cameron acknowledged.making the fourth and fifth deliveries together (as he did with the second and third) would mean an investment of around 800 million without changes in the method. More expenses: Costume designer Deborah Scott, Oscar-nominated for her work on the third installment, illustrates the scale of the problem. Each suit is designed, manufactured in the physical world, and then digitally “translated” with the help of animators and technicians. This process is multiplied in each film by hundreds of characters, creatures and environments. Cameron has publicly committed to do not use AI and always support the human work behind the film, which also prevents lowering prices in this way. What has gone wrong? Why hasn’t the third ‘Avatar’ reached the 2 billion of the previous installments? Cameron’s team affirms, according to the same medium, that Disney launched the film in a very similar way to ‘The Sense of Water’, three years earlier, but with more margin: there was more time between the trailers and the premiere, which allowed some expectation to be generated. Added to this are commercial obstacles such as the fact that it is the longest film in the saga (197 minutes) and that there has been a certain lack of merchandising and other parallel actions. It all adds up to making it a film that could have performed better. California über alles. The uncertainty extends beyond the movies: Disney had announced the construction of an ‘Avatar’ themed area at Disney California Adventure, designed to complement the popular Pandora land that has existed since 2017 in Animal Kingdom (Florida). Construction was scheduled to begin in 2026 but the scheduled closure of the ‘Monsters Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue’ attraction, necessary to begin work, has been postponed until 2027. One year late, for now. Disney parks expert Jim Shull told The Wrap that the franchise “as a cultural force is exhausted. No one is demanding to see more. If ‘Avatar 3’ had been a massive hit and people were clamoring for the fourth and fifth installments, that would change the equation. But there’s not much demand.” And he proposes a much more obvious alternative: expanding the ‘Zootopia’ areas, in line with the success of the ‘Zootopia: Hot Pursuit’ attraction at Shanghai Disneyland. In addition, there are logistical issues: the ‘Avatar’ water attraction required a complicated and expensive water treatment plant of its own. In Xataka | China saves ‘Avatar 3’: a good part of its billion in revenue comes from the only market that still goes to the movies

We believed that AI was killing jobs in the tech industry. It is actually changing the rules of the game: Crossover 1×41

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It is possible that in the future AI will take away our jobs, but at the moment it is being taken away from very few. This was stated in a recent Anthropic study on the impact of AI on the labor market, and this is a perfect perch to present the debate that concerns us in Crossover 1×41. And it is a special edition because we have as a guest Jordi Arrufiof Talent Arena. This event, which is held within the framework of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ​​is aimed at future developers and also senior profiles, and with it we had the opportunity to talk about how AI is changing the rules of the game for professionals in the sector. To begin, we must dispel myths. At least for now, because although there was a time that AI was going to replace programmers, what is being seen according to Arrufí is that The demand for technological talent is increasing. In fact, what is expected is that the impact of AI will cause this technology to begin to create jobs that we cannot even imagine. We also couldn’t imagine that with the rise of the Internet there would be frontend and backend developers or web designers: the same in this case. Many professionals may fear that future, and here the recommendation to be prepared for the future is that these professionals combine your technical capacity (‘hard skills’) with human capabilities (‘soft skills’) such as critical thinking, leadership or communication. The frenetic advancement of AI also makes the ability for continuous learning and adaptability key in these changing times. He vibe coding has changed the paradigm, and has opened this area even to users without basic programming knowledge. Plus there is something striking here. A real opportunity for current professionals and those to come, because if something is clearly taking off it is interest in technological sovereignty. Europe seeks to recover ground against the US and China through investments in chipsFor example. Public funding is especially critical to retaining talent and prevents professionals from emigrate for higher wages. We also had the opportunity to talk about another of the areas of greatest projection: robotics. It is expected a imminent adoption of humanoid robots in industry and in logistics processes. Domestic robots will take longer, no doubt, but what seems clear is that by 2035 the world will be dominated by AI agents and massive advances in fields such as biotechnology. This is not just about AI: It’s about talent, money and who adapts faster and in a more accurate way. On YouTube | Crossover In Xataka | A startup from Malaga is the most used European AI app in the world according to Andreessen Horowitz. It’s called Freepik

the technical imbalance that is silently killing Spanish reservoirs

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In a window of just 72 hours, Spain’s water reserve has experienced unprecedented growth. The data has gone from 693 cubic hectometers in one day, shooting up to 2,349 hm³ in just three days. However, behind this photograph of abundance and a blue-tinted map of Spain, Greenpeace has warned that we are facing an optical illusion. What we see shining in the sun is water, yes, but what accumulates at the bottom, invisible and silent, is mud. And there are more and more. The denunciation of silent death. The environmental organization Greenpeace has issued an alert: The useful life of Spanish reservoirs is running out. This is not an imminent risk of the concrete walls collapsing – the dams are sound from a civil engineering point of view – but rather what they call a “dramatic loss of operational efficiency.” The underlying problem is the calendar. The bulk of our hydraulic infrastructure was built during the dictatorship (1950-1975). This means, according to the data managed by the organization, that “a large part of the dams is now crossing the threshold of their theoretical project useful life”, estimated between 50 and 75 years. The concrete holds, but the steel mechanisms, such as valves and drains, suffer the passage of time. The physics of “solid avenues.” To understand why reservoirs are losing capacity, we must look at the violence of recent rains. As explained by the organizationthe new explosive storms fall on highly eroded basins. The water carries tons of earth, stones and debris into the reservoir. Older infrastructures lack the agility to manage this mix. The technical data is alarming. According to reports from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition (MITECO) and the CEDEX (Center for Studies and Experimentation of Public Works), the Ebro River has radically changed his behavior. Before the dams, the river transported 5.16 million tons of sediment per year to the Delta. Today, trapped by concrete walls, it only allows 0.37 million tons to pass through. The rest remains trapped, reducing the useful space for water. Chronicle of an ignored obsolescence. This is not an unforeseen accident; It is the result of managing the climate of the 21st century with tools from the mid-20th century. Greenpeace insists the dams operate under “climatic pressure for which they were not designed.” In the province of León, iconic reservoirs such as Villameca (inaugurated in 1946) or Barrios de Luna (1956) were designed under stable climatic parameters that have little to do with with the current extreme variability. Experts have been warning for years: geologists from the University of Barcelona They already warned in 2018 that the uncertainty about the real amount of sediment is high, because monitoring the bottom of all the swamps is complex and expensive. When the mud becomes a threat. This accumulation of materials is not just a capacity issue; It is a physical security risk that is already showing its most dangerous side in the south. While we celebrate the rain, a silent battle is being waged in Huelva against toxic sludge. Just a few days ago, the Military Emergency Unit (UME) has had to be deployed in “anticipation” in the mining ponds of the province. There, torrential rains—which have tripled forecasts in some areas—have saturated the terrain to the limit. The risk is no longer just that the reservoir will lose site, but also the liquefaction of the sludge: that the pressure of the water converts the solid waste into an uncontrollable tide. It is the most graphic reminder that our infrastructures, whether water dams or waste ponds, are suffering stress for which they are hardly prepared. From the dredge to the forest. If the reservoirs are full of mud, logic would dictate removing it; but the economic reality makes it unviable. CEDEX technical notes cited in the context of the Greenpeace complaint show that the cost of extracting The sediment “far outweighs the cost of preventing it.” Cleaning a small reservoir of just 10 hm³ could cost between 50 and 150 million euros. If the sludge needs pretreatment before going to the landfill, the price skyrockets. For its part, the MITECO has started “pilot tests” to mobilize sediments in the Mequinenza-Ribarroja section, with a budget of 1.2 million euros, but they are surgical interventions in a systemic problem. For Greenpeace, the solution is not in concrete, but in the mountains. “The solution does not end at the dam or reservoir, it begins in its surroundings,” they say. The organization demands an urgent hydrological-forest restoration, where a healthy riverbed and a basin full of trees act as a “sponge.” The roots retain the soil and prevent the mountain from falling apart when it rains heavily and ending up at the bottom of the swamp. The risk of illusory guarantee. The EU Nature Restoration Regulation, approved in 2024, obliges Spain to present a National Plan by August 2026. It is the last opportunity to change the strategy. Julio Barea, head of water at Greenpeace, issues a final warning that should resonate beyond the current rain: “The technical obsolescence of our reservoirs will make us increasingly vulnerable to the next great water crisis.” If the bottom drains are not modernized (so that the mud can leave) and the headwaters of the rivers are not reforested (so that the mud does not reach), the “water guarantee” will be a statistical fantasy. Image | freepik Xataka | Far from Grazalema and the reservoirs, Andalusia has another serious problem: completely collapsed mining ponds

We thought this bug was a pig. Now we know that it was two meters tall, weighed a thousand kilos and was a killing machine related to whales.

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Almost 200 years ago, a paleontologist found some completely improbable bones. They thought about it a thousand times, tried to find some sense in it; but everything ended in the same delirious image: that of a huge pig with the capacity to destroy everything in front of it. And that’s what we called him for decades: the ‘pig from hell’. What we have just discovered, two centuries later, is that we know almost nothing about them. Now they are even more terrible. But what really is a ‘hell pig’? It is the popular nickname by which entelodonts are known; an extinct family of large prehistoric mammals that lived about 30 million years ago. The bug was described for the first time in the 1840sbut it was in the early 20th century that paleontologists assumed it was closely related to pigs or peccaries. It was not something irrational: on a strictly physical level, entelodonts looked very similar to modern-day pigs. Two meters tall, weighing more than a thousand kilos and jaws capable of crushing bones, but pigs nonetheless. With “crushing bones” we are falling short. Recently, a team from Vanderbilt University could examine in detail the teeth of these animals and, thanks to three-dimensional models of dental microwear, they have managed to turn around everything we thought we knew about the role of these animals in North American ecosystems 30 million years ago. Your conclusions they leave no room for doubt: “the largest specimens were capable of crushing bones with an efficiency similar to or even greater than that of lions and hyenas.” Luckily, they weren’t very smart; And, according to the researchers, “it has a brain-body relationship similar to that of reptiles, so they were very unintelligent creatures.” A complex story. At first, experts thought that this monstrous animal was a born hunter. Then, partly because of this familiarity with pigs, they came to the conclusion that they were omnivorous animals, capable of eating small animals and carrion. Now, thanks to this team, we know that they were most likely at the top of the food chain of their ecosystems. This, in fact, raises the possibility that different species (or subspecies) occupied different ecological niches. However, there are curious things. To begin with, entelodonts have nothing to do with pigs. In fact, they are closer to whales and hippos than anything else. But, above all, it shows us the difficulties we continue to have in understanding our past. Little by little, we are understanding that if our way of looking at the past conditions the futureour ability to understand what the world was like 30 million years ago will radically change many things we think we are. And the best thing is that, even though I get melancholic and retrospective, everything we know makes it clear that the “pig from hell” is more infernal than ever. Image | Carnegie Museum of Natural History In Xataka | The deaths of cows, reindeer or rhinos are not a mystery: they are the consequences of a curse, that of “large animals”

Microsoft is killing Xbox for Excel

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Microsoft has imposed a profit margin target of 30% on its Xbox division, a figure much higher than the average usually obtained in the video game industry, according to reveals Bloomberg. This guideline would explain many of the controversial decisions that Xbox has taken in recent years, especially in terms of project cancellations, massive layoffs and price increases are concerned. a goal to leagues. The average profit margin in the video game industry has ranged between 17% and 22% in recent years, according to share Jason Schreier in his article, based on estimates from S&P Global Market Intelligence. As the journalist states, on Xbox, that figure was between 10% and 20% over the last six years. On the other hand, court documents from 2023 revealed that Microsoft’s gaming business had a margin of 12% in the first nine months of fiscal year 2022. S&P Global analyst Neil Barbour affirms that “a margin of 30% or higher is usually reserved for a company that is really nailing it.” To give an example, look at Capcom right now, which is practically in its golden age and which in recent reports operating margins were seen that were close to 40%. Who is behind the change? According to According to Schreier, this goal was implemented in the fall of 2023 by Amy Hood, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, whose team has assumed a much more relevant role in the gaming business in recent years. According to sources As cited by Bloomberg, previously Xbox developers did not have to meet specific numerical targets and were asked to focus on making the best games possible without worrying too much about finances. The practical consequences. To achieve that margin, Xbox has had to take drastic measures. In 2024 it announced that it would release most of its games on Nintendo and Sony consoles for the first time. In July we discovered that canceled several expensive projects that had been in development for more than seven years, such as Everwild, Perfect Dark or Project Blackbird. Also has laid off thousands of employees and Game Pass prices have increased and of the consoles. To go up, they have even increased the price of your development kits. According to the sources of the reportlooking to the future, games that are cheap to produce or with high income expectations will be prioritized over riskier bets. The Game Pass dilemma. The strategy of including all Xbox games in Game Pass on launch day has hurt direct game sales, according to they point Schreier’s sources. And just as share In the middle, to compensate for these losses, Xbox offers its developers a credit calculated using an opaque formula that seems to favor games in which players spend more hours, such as online multiplayer titles. This makes it even more difficult to achieve that 30% margin. The next hardware bet. Sarah Bond, president of Xbox, has declared recently told Mashable that the company’s next console will be “a very premium, very high-end and polished experience,” suggesting a change in strategy compared to previous generations and, predictably, a significantly higher price. There are already voices that point to a console much more similar to a PC, a concept similar to what we have seen with the ROG Xbox Ally. However, there is no official information yet, so we will have to wait to find out more details. The official response. An Xbox spokesperson has declared that the company “has a long-term vision” for its business and that success “does not look the same in every project or priority.” He added that they evaluate “the business as a whole, balancing creativity, innovation and sustainability across a diverse portfolio of offerings.” Just like account Bloomberg, in July, Amy Hood said in a call with investors that the Xbox division’s operating income had grown 34% in the quarter ended in June thanks to “continued prioritization of higher margin opportunities.” Decisions. Xbox has been losing market share to PlayStation and Nintendo for years. Microsoft no longer discloses Xbox hardware sales, but analysts estimate PlayStation 5 has sold more than double of units than the Xbox Series the purchase of Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023, the largest acquisition in the history of gaming. However, it seems that for Microsoft it is not enough, and everything indicates that the company will be much more aware of its gaming division than ever, a struggle between executives and senior managers that no one knows where it will end. In Xataka | There is a clear beneficiary of the success of Microsoft and AI: Satya Nadella, who pockets a bonus of $96.5 million

It is an invaluable source for generative AI and at the same time it is what is killing it

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Wikipedia wants to be the last human bastion against AI-generated content. The Wikimedia Foundation removed AI-generated summaries after several cases of hallucinations and the complaint of their editors. It’s not Wikipedia’s only problem with AI, it’s also wreaking havoc on its traffic. What is happening. In a article published on the foundation’s blogproduct manager Marshall Miller details the current situation in Wikipedia traffic. The foundation estimates that there has been an 8% drop in human traffic between May and August 2025. They attribute this to the use of generative AI as a source of information, such as the chatbots themselves or initiatives such as the Google AI Overview that respond to the user without having to click on a link. Why is it important. It poses a risk to the continuity of Wikipedia because people are obtaining the information that its volunteers produce, but without going through the web and without adding visits. It is the same as What’s happening in the media with Google’s AI briefingsalthough the main difference is that the media lives off advertising and Wikipedia lives off donations from individuals. Miller sees it clearly: “With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers will be able to develop and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors will be able to support this work.” A crisis that comes from afar. Wikipedia losing traffic has been in the news for a long time. In 2020 they had a massive drop: They lost 3 billion organic traffic visits and the culprit was Google. The appearance of direct response modules that displayed information directly on the results page, causing many people to not click. Correction. In May of this year, Wikipedia detected an unusual increase in traffic from Brazil. At first they classified the traffic as human, but later they verified that they were bots designed to imitate human behavior. This led them to update their bot detection mechanism and, with the new updated data, they saw that there had been an 8% drop in human traffic. The irony. In the era of generative AI, sites like Wikipedia are an invaluable source of information. It is where the chatbots and Google’s own search draw from to give us those answers, but at the same time they are harming it and not only because of the drop in traffic, the bots and scrapers also have an impact on the operation and represent a noticeable load on the servers. Solutions. The Wikipedia Foundation proposes responsible use by users to seek original sources and highlight the importance of human-created content. It sounds almost like a plea and the truth is that the outlook does not look too good. In the case of AI Overview, the media have warned about the consequences and there are even groups that They have sued Google. There are clues that Google could be raising licensing agreements with large media groupsbut for the moment it has not materialized and its results with AI continue to work as the first day (they have even launched the AI mode). Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | A Wikipedia editor spent years pretending to be Russian Red. He was actually an Indian scammer

The links lived their peak with the Google search engine. Now that same search engine is killing them

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Google’s results page was an ode to web links. It was the ultimate expression of That basic information unit That was the Internet cement. Now that cement is getting rid before our eyes, and the fault is an AI that is transforming everythingincluding the famous search engine. That is bringing many consequences. The funny thing is that Google has been with contradictory speeches that on the one hand they seem to make it clear that everything is going well and that on the other they point to a potential problem. Where I said, I say Diego Liz Reid, the head of the Google search engine, He published an article In early August in Google’s official blog. According to her, the click volume generated from the search engine had remained “relatively stable” Regarding the same period last year. In May Nick Fox, another Google manager, explained In the podcast ai inside that “from our point of view, the web is thriving.” The same then claimed Pichai, CEO of Google, which In an interview In Decoder he indicated that the search engine “is definitely sending traffic to a wide variety of sources and editorial groups.” John Mueller, another of the company’s managers, He stood out that the clicks that generated the summaries of the “AI Overviews” of Google were “of higher quality” despite the fact that the studies confirmed that the average traffic on websites had fallen about 35%. However Some documents Recently obtained thanks to the US antitrust trial against Google they have revealed another reality. In them the company admitted that “The open web is rapid decline” That first statement against Google’s traditional speech that “everything is going well” with the web was seen these days accompanied by another equally worrying. The Penske Media editorial group – magazine editor like Rolling Stone or Variety— has sued to Google precisely for using AI summaries on the results page. These summaries collect information from various media and then present it to users directly as the answer to their question. And in doing so, they allege in demand, users They do not see the need to go to the original source. The creator of the content, therefore, runs out of traffic and unable to monetize it, especially through advertising. In The Wall Street Journal They quoted The words of José Castañeda, spokesman for Google, who responded to the demand stating that «with AI Overviews, users find the most useful search and use it more, which creates new opportunities to discover content. Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to websites from the entire network, and ai overViews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites. We will defend ourselves against these unfounded accusations. “ However, Markham Erickson, one of Google’s managers in legal material, explained that what is happening is that people are changing their way of looking for information: “The 10 blue bonds serve the ecosystem very well, and it was a simple value proposal (…). We are not going to leave that model. We believe that model has its usefulness. It remains an important part of the ecosystem. But user preferences and what they want are also changing. So, instead of answers based on facts and 10 blue links, They want more and more contextual responses and summaries. We want to be able to offer that too, while leading people to valuable content on the Internet. ” Online media, in danger A study by Press Gazette has revealed the evolution of web traffic that the 50 main media between August 2024 and August 2025 have had. Of all those media, Only five managed to grow in traffic From one year to another. The rest has fallen, and in some cases extraordinary: Source: Sherwood News graph with ados by Press Gazette. In that worrying classification you can see how even media such as The New York Times have lost 7%of its traffic, but the thing is much worse for CNN (38%less), The Washington Post (40%), use today (34%) or Forbes (50%). The falls, coming from a statistical analysis of Similar Web, are terrible and show a clear reality: that the traffic that Google previously came thanks to the links is being lost. And it is being lost because of the simple reason that the Google search engine is displacing the links to the background. The traditional results page is no longer full of links, and instead The first thing that one usually see is a summary generated by AI in which Google collects information and then condensate it and give it chew to the user. Of the search engine that gives you links to which he talks with you Things seem clear to Google, which first offered the AI ​​overViews generated with AI and that is gradually expanding the deployment of Ai mode, his “search engine in conversational mode” which is basically a perplexity or a chatgpt Search. Logan Kilpatrick, head of Google Ai Studio and Gemini’s API, indicated how the new AI Mode already has a new URL (Google.com/ai), although said conversational search engine does not work at the moment in all regions. In Spain it is not available, for example, but the simple use of a VPN allows you to use it without problems. A verified x user called Burkov replied saying that this mode of ia should be the default search engine, to which Kilpatrick replied With a simple “soon :)”. Two days later, yes, clarified That answer pointing out that “I was not saying that AI Mode will replace the main search engine.” Another Google manager too He wanted to clarify that Kilpatrick’s response wanted to say that they would soon be available to those who wanted to use it. As they explained In Search Engine Landthat AI Mode becomes the Google default search engine implies great changes in the way the contents were located. Before SEO allowed trying to position these contents, but now we will be at the expense of an AI system that will … Read more

In 1930, Japan sent rabbits to an island to test chemical weapons. A century later something is killing the creatures

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In the quiet region of the Seto Inland Sea, three km off the coast of the Japanese city of Takehara, in Hiroshima prefecture, lies Ōkunoshimabetter known as Usagi Jima or Rabbit Island. Today, the island is famous for being home to hundreds of wild rabbits that roam freely fed by tourists and living without predators. However, behind this idyllic image hides a dark past. In World War II the island was a secret center for the production of chemical weapons by the Imperial Japanese Army. The rabbits are “children” of that experiment, and now they are dying. A secret from the past. During the 1930s and 1940s, Ōkunoshima was the epicenter of the manufacture of so-called mustard gasphosgene and other chemicals used by Japan against Chinese soldiers and civilians. Estimates suggest that These toxic agents caused around 80,000 deathsand to test the effects that those experiments had a small rabbit fauna was launched onto the island which was increasing in number. To give us an idea, the strategic importance of the island was such that was removed from Japanese maps to keep their activities secret. Since then, there has been speculation that the number of current rabbits are direct descendants of those used in the poison gas testing experiments at the island’s military laboratory. According to Professor Ellis Kraussfrom the University of California, San Diego, most of the test rabbits were slaughtered by American forces after the Japanese surrender in 1945, but those that escaped their fate transformed the place. Rabbits and more rabbits. Therefore, and given that it seems unlikely that there are surviving creatures that inhabited the place during the military era, the question has always been to discern which are direct descendants and which are not, in which case, where the hell did they come from? One of the most accepted theories suggests that, in 1971, a group of students released about eight extra rabbits on the island. The absence of predators, the prohibition of hunting and the inability to keep pets such as cats or dogs have allowed the population to grow uncontrollably until it reaches approximately 1,000 individuals today. The impact of tourism. Although rabbits have made Ōkunoshima a very popular and tourist destinationthe increase in visitors has generated serious environmental and animal welfare problems. As? The practice of feeding rabbits inappropriate foods, such as cabbage, has led to digestive problems and nutritional deficiencies, reducing their life expectancy to just two yearsmuch less than in natural conditions. Besides, feeding dynamics are inconsistent: On sunny days and holidays, tourists provide large quantities of food, while on rainy days or out of season the animals are left without supplies, facing a shortage of resources, since the island’s vegetation has been devastated by overpopulation. And if all this were not enough, a mystery surrounds the island these days. They are dying without explanation. According to the Japanese authorities, More than 70 rabbits have died in circumstances not yet clarified. Last Thursday, Police arrested a man identified as Riku Hotta25, on suspicion of having kicked at least one rabbit on the island. The animal reportedly died shortly after the incident, prompting authorities to investigate whether there is a connection between Hotta and the discovery of those 77 carcasses. between November 26 and January 12. The bodies of the 77 rabbits were apparently found with unnatural injuries, such as broken bones, which has further sparked concern among authorities and tourists. Possible causes of death. As we said, despite the arrest, authorities have not yet determined a conclusive cause for the death of the creatures. However, Japan’s Ministry of Environment has indicated that Possible reasons could include: Infectious diseases, which could have spread due to the high population density and irregular diet provided by tourists. Adverse weather conditions, especially the cold of winter, could be affecting the rabbits, whose food depends largely on occasional visitors. Human factors, such as acts of cruelty or negligence, since there have been cases of visitors not following animal care guidelines. In this regard, and given that the suspect (Hotta) is not a resident of the island, but of Otsu, in Shiga prefecture, located halfway across the country, it is being investigated whether he made sporadic visits to carry out said attacks. Meanwhile, the Japanese government has stressed that is working together with veterinarians and animal welfare organizations to identify the causes of these deaths, and does so while reinforcing surveillance and monitoring of the island to prevent future incidents. Future measures. There is no doubt that in a society like Japan, where pets occupy a prominent place, the incident has prompted calls to strengthen the island’s security and improve regulations to protect rabbits from possible aggressors. Options are being studied such as the installation of surveillance cameras, access restrictions and awareness campaigns to guarantee the well-being of the animals and the sustainability of the island as a tourist destination. The paradox of an island with a dark past. Rabbit Island represents a fascinating example of how a place’s military past can be transformed into a tourist attraction. Furthermore, it also highlights the challenges of human intervention (once again) in ecosystems. Image | Chih-Wei In Xataka | Japan sent the wrong creature to eradicate snakes from an island. The disaster was so big that it took half a century to solve it In Xataka | In 1940, a creature snuck onto an island in the United States and devoured everything. Today two of the species most feared by humans coexist alone

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