An island is a universe of its own – a small world separated by the ocean. For animal-lovers, an island replete with cute animals probably sounds like paradise. Of course, you have to really love animals to find an island with one snake per-square-meter appealing.
We’ve assembled a list of the best animal-infested islands around the globe to help you plan your visit – or, in the case of Snake Island, steer clear of them.
10 Rottnest Island, Australia
Don’t let its name fool you: There’s nothing rotten about this slice of down-under paradise. At least if you like cute things. Their diminutive bodies, big wet eyes, and pinchable cheeks led Quokkas to make a cameo in many a selfie, which then led them to take the Internet by storm.
Rottnest Island, located off the coast of Western Australia, is one of the only places to see these wee marsupials.
9 Okunoshima Island, Japan
Okunoshima Island was where Japan produced its chemicals weapons in the second World War. That’s some pretty heavy business, so how about some levity?
So, here are many bunnies.
No one agrees exactly how all these many bunnies got to the island in the first place. Some say they’re leftover lab rabbits, while others believe that some school children brought them to the island in the 1970s.
However they arrived, the rabbits did what rabbits do: Each other. The doinked like bunnies and now, much to tourists’ delight, they hop in the thousands.
8 Christmas Island
Here’s a phrase you might not expect us to say excitedly: we’ve got crabs.
Lots of them.
Christmas Island red crabs live on only two places: Christmas Island (duh) and another Australian territory, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Though they inhabit a relatively limited territory, millions of them crawl across Christmas Island every year from October to November during their annual migration.
Millions and millions of them.
It’s thought that their huge numbers may be to the extinction of the endemic Maclear's rat in 1903, which may have eaten enough of them to keep their numbers in check. But this rat also had no fear of humans, which made them an easy mark for extermination.
7 Big Major Cay, Bahamas
There are around 2 billion pigs in the world – but some are luckier than others.
On Big Major Cay, an uninhabited island off the coast of Exuma, there are feral pigs that are famous for chilling out beachside – and for taking dips in the crystalline Carribean water.
These animals live pretty much exclusively on handouts from people who come to visit the so-called Pig Beach to scope out the two-dozen or so piggies that call this place home.
6 Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico
If you find yourself in Puerto Rico and feel like monkeying around, head for Cayo Santiago.
The island is populated exclusively by Rhesus monkeys, all of which are the offspring of 409 monkeys originally imported from India by Clarence R. Carpenter and the School of Tropical Medicine in San Juan.
Today, the monkeys provide a perfect real-world laboratory for studying primate behavior.
5 Ilha de Queimada Grande, Brasil
Snakes!
This Brazilian locale, also called Snake Island, is Indiana Jones’ nightmare. It’s also the only home of the endangered – and highly venomous – golden lancehead pit viper. But there are thousands of other snakes here too, with some estimates at one snake per square meter (the island is 430,000 square meters total).
It’s thought that the snakes were marooned on the island when rising sea levels cut it off from the mainland. Today, no one is allowed on it, to protect both the snakes and people.
Though no bites from the endangered vipers have ever been recorded, lanceheads at large are responsible for more deaths than any other kind of snake in the Americas.
4 Miyajima Island, Japan
Most deer are easily spooked – but not these ones.
Local folklore says the thousand-odd Sika deer in Miyajima were once considered sacred messengers from the gods. In fact, until 1637, killing one was punishable by death.
They’re still protected today (albeit with less draconian legislation), which has made these deer cocky – or friendly, depending on your perspective. They’ll walk right up to you and stare blankly like only a deer can.
It’s very en-deering.
3 Macquarie Island, Australia
Want to see some royal penguins?
How about seeing all of them?
Waddle this way then.
During their annual nesting season, this island – a UNESCO World Heritage Site, located about halfway between Antarctica and New Zealand – hosts the entire royal penguin population during their nesting period. Throughout the rest of the year, the penguins can generally be found in the waters of Antarctica.
2 Gough Island
In the 19th century, sailors visiting Gough Island brought rodent stowaways – who found the digs here quite to their liking.
These mice went ham. They’ve eaten everything in their path – a bit like Templeton at the fair in Charlotte’s Web – and have since evolved to be 50 percent larger than the average house mouse.
These invasive mice are without much in the way of predators, but there’s plenty of food. Unfortunately, there are so many mice, they’ve begun decimating the local population of albatross – as the mice love to eat their eggs.
Efforts to exterminate the mice and save the island’s native birds are now underway.
1 Lambay Island, Ireland
The best place to see marsupials is in Australia.
Second best? Maybe Ireland.
In the 1950s, a man called Rupert Baring introduced a population of wild red-necked wallabies to Lambay Island, a spit of land off the coast near Dublin. Later, in the 1980s, Dublin Zoo threw in a few extra. Today, there are roughly 100 of these critters hopping around. Along with the wallabies, Lambay Island houses one of the nation's foremost seabird colonies, including a vast array of different species that can be hard to find elsewhere in Ireland.