Rabbits | Nature Adventure

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Biology

Rabbits are small, furry mammals found all over the world, from the desert to the Arctic circle! They have powerful hind legs that allow them to run and hop at breakneck speeds, and giant, upright ears that help to regulate their body temperature. They have fur colors ranging from dark brown to pure white, and domesticated rabbits have all kinds of unique patterns not found in wild populations, like spots and stripes!

Rabbits are famous for their ability to breed quickly and give birth to many offspring at once. This is great for the rabbit, since they are eaten by a wide variety of animals, but can be an issue when it comes to overpopulation! Rabbits can have between 4 to 12 babies at a time, and can become pregnant immediately after giving birth with a gestation period of only about 1 month! Even though most wild rabbits only live for around 1 year, this works out to a lot of babies in just one lifetime!

Rabbit families live in burrows, and many burrows in the same area are called a warren. These structures can be huge, spanning several feet in length and having multiple entrances, emergency exits, and even specialized rooms like nurseries, living rooms, and hallways!

Ecological Importance

Managing a healthy population of rabbits is no small task! Rabbits are they prey of many animals in their ecosystems, from birds of prey to coyotes and foxes, and they're a staple food source in their natural ecosystems. But since rabbits are such prolific breeders, they tend to invade foreign ecosystems quickly - to devastating results. Since rabbits have so many offspring and are so good at evading capture, removing rabbits from an ecosystem before they can eat all the local plant-life can be quite hard!

In addition to this, rabbits are carriers of a few really bad diseases. These usually stay within the species and don't infect other animals, but they can go through a warren quickly, killing off large amounts of rabbits very suddenly and leaving predators with nothing to eat! Making sure that there are enough rabbits to feed the local animals, while not having too many to where injured and sick rabbits can spread disease to their healthy families, is hard to balance.

Did you know?

Rabbits in the wild don't actually eat carrots!

Rabbits prefer leafy greens, grass, and hay. A rabbit in its natural habitat will avoid starchy root vegetables and fruits! That said, domestic rabbits can have carrots as an occasional treat, but they should never be part of their main diet. Carrots are full of good vitamins, but their bodies aren't equipped to handle having them all the time. Too much of a good thing can turn out to be bad for them, just like eating too much cake can be harmful for people!

The bulk of a rabbit's diet, whether domestic or wild, should be mostly hay. They need to continuously have something to chew on in order to wear down their front teeth. Like beavers, their teeth never stop growing! Luckily, they can wear them down on their own by eating a healthy diet of grasses.

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