On the sub-Antarctic island of Marion in the Indian Ocean, they are a deadly threat to one of the world’s most iconic seabirds – the wandering albatross, symbol of the Southern Ocean and immortalised in classic literature such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

An estimated 1,800 pairs – about one quarter of all breeding individuals – nest on Marion, but at some point over the past two decades or so, the non-native house mice have discovered a taste for both the chicks and the adults of many of the island’s seabirds, with disastrous impacts.

Extraordinary as it sounds, says Dr Anton Wolfaardt, the Mouse-Free Marion project manager, the omnivorous mice have slowly moved from the island invertebrates as a source of protein to the seabirds, which don’t appear to recognise them as a threat.