Photo by Petr Kratochvil

France is about to export 15,000 lapins (rabbits) to China. To be precise, 15,ooo pregnant female rabbits. They are heading for a rabbit farm in Chongqing in the centre of China and the idea is that they will help the Chinese feed its growing population.

In China people already breed rabbits for food but generally their animals aren’t very good quality and don’t produce much meat. So they’re buying in some fine, fat French bunnies who will improve the bloodlines and provide healthy breeding stock for the future. These 15,000 bunnies will be producing 100,000 babies a year and of course add the next generations to that and the number will increase exponentially. There’ll soon be trillions of them.

The rabbits will be flown out in a specially customised plane and French experts will help the Chinese bunny breeders and keep an eye on things to make sure everything goes well.