"Opinionatedly Yours"
#7: November 14, 1997
Confessions of a Bunnyhugger
By Barry Kent MacKay

A Brief Introduction to "The" Rabbit

Is there any animal more evocative of gentleness, more symbolic of timidity, love, softness, and elegant beauty than the rabbit? And is there any animal we abuse in more ways?

By "rabbit" we usually mean the European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus. They are native to Europe, from Britain east to Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily, south to northern Africa. They have been widely introduced to other parts of the world, sometimes with extremely unfortunate results. The European rabbit is the progenitor of all domesticated varieties of rabbits. The wild form is of moderate build and brown in color.

Unlike any North American species, the European rabbit lives in colonies, and usually digs long burrows in a complex popularly known as a "warren," but more correctly called "buries." Some of these tunnels go down as far as nine feet below the earth's surface.

Unlike hares, but like cottontails, European rabbits give birth to helpless, blind and naked young in a nest. But while cottontail nests are usually snugly located in a depression in long grasses, perhaps deep in a thicket, the nest of the European rabbit is underground, at the end of a short burrow away from the main burrow. Occasionally, however, even the European rabbit will give birth to her litter aboveground.

Before a population crash caused by the widespread appearance of myxomatosis in 1954/5, it was estimated that in Britain alone there were 60 to 100 million wild European rabbits. While greatly reduced by disease, there are signs that the species is recovering well in its native lands.

The European rabbit is polygamous, one buck mating with several does. There is much chasing of does by the males, and sometimes ritualistic combat will erupt between two males, neither victor nor vanquished being hurt by the encounter.

Litter size ranges from two to eight and is very dependent on conditions of the local environment. Embryos may be reabsorbed at times of stress due to food shortages or population abundance, or cold weather. The mother rabbit will vigorously defend her young with her powerful hind feet. The rabbit reaches sexual maturity at three to four months of age.

Although snails and earthworms have been recorded in their diets, the European rabbit is almost exclusively vegetarian. Like our snowshoe hare, the European rabbit produces two types of droppings, one of which is eaten.

The Rabbit as a Victim

The animal rights movement is usually, and correctly, primarily concerned about widespread cruelty imposed upon animals by humans acting in their own selfish interest. In such fashion, living, feeling creatures become mere tools to an end, victims of institutionalized abuse. Areas of common concern include animals used in medical research; animals used in cosmetic and product testing; animals used in psychological testing; animals used in toxicity testing; animals raised in factory farms for fur; animals raised in factory farm for meat; animals caught in traps and snares; animals trapped, shot, and poisoned as "nuisance" wildlife; the introduction of non-native wildlife; animals hunted for sport; animals abused by the pet industry; animals that have other animals pitted against them; and animals purposely bred far from type to produce genetic variations without regard to the needs of the animals themselves.

The rabbit features in all of these, often being the animal of choice for particular forms of abuse. The "lucky rabbit's foot" is indeed unlucky for the poor rabbit.

The size and ease of care and general gentleness of the domesticated rabbit make it the species of choice for many forms of product testing, including the infamous Draize test, wherein the eyes of rabbits held motionless in stocks are subjected to various irritating substances. The close proximity of veins and arteries in their delicate ears make rabbits ideal for blood extraction in laboratory conditions. The rapidity with which they procreate allows the production of specific strains for specific "needs," including research needs.

The very gentleness of rabbits and the appeal of their features has led to them being popular "pet"s. Unfortunately breeders don't always take into account the needs of the rabbits themselves in carefully selecting breeding stock to produce "cute" animals that are increasingly dependent on human care. The obvious appeal of big-eyed, floppy-eared "bunnies" to children may trigger impulse-buying by parents ill-prepared to provide proper care for the rabbits. While rabbits are potentially very satisfactory to humans as companion animals, too often their chewing or digging habits lead to them being shut away in cages or, worse, dumped into the wild or into municipal pounds or animal shelters, or given to a farmer, once the novelty of having them in the home has worn thin. Because the rapidity with which they reproduce makes them easy to replace, individual rabbits are normally thus of little value, and too often owners of "pet" rabbits won't go to the expense of providing necessary veterinarian care, proper housing or appropriate food and food supplements.

Wild rabbits are wondrously alert and sensitive creatures. Apart from a strong kick of the hind legs they have only their senses and their marvelous running ability to defend themselves against a host of predators. Unfortunately those characteristics make them the prey of choice for many "sports"men, who, armed with shotguns and accompanied by dogs specifically bred to hunt rabbits, scour the fields and hedgerows ready to blast the fleeing creatures as they break cover.

Even more cruel is the sport of "hounding", wherein the European rabbit's large relative, the European, or brown, hare is pursued by hounds, and sometimes shredded alive by a pack of dogs.

A few years ago I witnessed a similar activity in Ontario while investigating dog compounds on behalf of API. These are huge enclosures where specific breeds of dogs are set upon specific species of wildlife. I visited two compounds. One housed red foxes, the other, snowshoe hares. The idea is to judge the dogs on their "performance" as they follow the scent of the "game." They are not "supposed" to actually catch and kill their prey, it's their tracking ability that is judged. The breed used in the snowshoe hare compound was beagles. While there was plenty of opportunity to escape, witnesses of actual tracking meets have told us of several instances of the pursued animal being caught and torn apart. API supported a legislative move to ban the practice, but the government did not pursue the issue, and to date it remains not only legal, but unregulated.

The European rabbit's complex assembly of tunnels and colonial living has led to the ancient "sport" of ferreting. Domestic ferrets, derived from the polecat, Putorius putorius, are carried to the opening of a rabbit tunnel, and placed inside. Nets are placed over openings, and as the ferret pursues her subterranean prey, the rabbits charge out of alternate exits, only to be netted and clubbed to death. Ferreting does not work on North American rabbits as they don't live in colonies or in burrows.

A relative of the polecat, the black-footed ferret, is native to North America. Instead of being a rabbit specialist, the black-footed ferret evolved to hunt prairie dogs on the high plains and prairies of the west. The mass killing off of prairie dogs by farmers waging war on these chunky rodents resulted in the near extinction of the black-footed ferret.

In America the horrid "sport" of "bunny-bopping" reflects just how cruel our kind can become. Here the objective is to drive rabbits into a central area where men, women, and children beat the terrified animals to death with sticks.

Precisely because rabbits, particularly the European rabbit, regularly follow certain paths through the underbrush, they are relatively easy to catch in snares. As the rabbit struggles the snare tightens, choking off blood to the brain. It's all silent and usually goes on unseen by those of us who would be upset by the practice. Snares are the favorite trap of the poacher.

The European rabbit, plus other species, have been transplanted as "game" animals into regions to which they are not native. This has sometimes led to ecological problems, which in turn have led to persecution of the rabbit.

For example, the Laysan duck, Anas laysanensis, endemic to Laysan Island, nests under grass tussocks. First the population was subjected to hunting by guano-miners between 1891 and 1904. In 1909 and 1910, notwithstanding that the island had just been named a sanctuary as part of the Hawaiian Islands Bird Reservation, Japanese plume-hunters killed still more of these little ducks. By then introduced rabbits had "overrun" the islands, killing the vegetation essential to the duck and other native wildlife for food and shelter. By 1912 there were only seven ducks left.

The rabbits were subjected to an intense eradication program, which allowed the vegetation to recover, although in 1930 there was only one female duck left. She laid a clutch of eggs, but they were eaten by a bristle-thighed curlew, a type of large sandpiper that passes through the Hawaiian islands when migrating between its Alaskan nesting grounds and its wintering range in the South Pacific. However, there was still enough semen in that lone duck's oviduct to produce another clutch of fertile eggs, and by that narrow thread the species survived, now numbering several hundred birds: one of the most remarkable recoveries in the history of conservation, but one bought at the expense of the rabbits who died to make it happen.

Far better known is the population explosion of rabbits in Australia. Damage done to native Australian vegetation and the wildlife dependent upon it pales to insignificance compared to the damage done by hoofed livestock, but the European rabbit has become a hated scapegoat, and a symbol of the folly of introducing none-native animals. Commercial vegetable and grain crops are also at risk to rabbits, as any of us who has ever seen a cottontail nibbling away in our garden is well aware. But instead of the bemused tolerance I would hope compassionate people would display, the response against the rabbits in Australia has been all out warfare, with clubbing and shooting, poisoning and the deliberate introduction of viruses fatal to rabbits.

A recent example was the release of caliciviruses responsible for rabbit viral hemorrhagic diseases. The horror of visiting this fatal disease upon millions of rabbits is bad enough to contemplate, but there is potential risks to other species, including native species and wildlife, as well. When the government of New Zealand demurred on plans to release the virus on introduced rabbits in that country, local farmers went ahead and did so anyway.

For a complete story on rabbits in Australia, contact the Rabbit Information Service, P.O. Box 30, Riverton, Western Australia, 6148, Australia, or visit the website at http://wantree.com.au/~rabbit/rabbit.htm.

Rabbit fur is noted for its softness, although not its durability. Its cheapness makes it viable to the fur industry for some lining and trim, although not, fortunately, for lasting warmth or fashion. Although there is some domestic use of wild rabbit fur, there is no discernible trade in the product.

A few years ago a big effort was made in the U.S. to market fast-food rabbit meat outlets the same way chicken is marketed. The idea wasn't that popular, possibly because rabbits are a less traditional food in western culture than chickens, turkeys, cows, and pigs. However there are many people who do eat rabbit meat, noted for being tender, a little more flavorful than chicken, and cheap.

Populations of native rabbits have been depleted by overhunting in some areas. Grassland and hedgerow habitat, important to rabbits, has been destroyed. Vast areas of the American midwest, given over to monoculture, have been lost to native rabbits.

But more serious, in terms of species survival, is the plight of the Ryukyu rabbit, Pentalagus furnessi. There is only one member of the genus and it is found only on two small islands in the southern part of Japan. This is a small rabbit, with a tiny tail and relatively small ears. The animal was greatly overhunted both for food and because it was reputed to have medicinal properties. In 1921 the Japanese authorities sought to protect the dwindling population of this little known rabbit by designating it as a special national monument, giving it complete protection from shooting or capture. Unfortunately stray dogs continued to prey on these odd little rabbits, and deforestation removed most of the habitat necessary for this rabbit's survival. Sadly for conservation efforts, Pentalagus is one rabbit who does not breed readily in captivity.

Possibly a little better known, at least here in America, is the endangered Volcano rabbit, Romerolagus diazi, found only on the middle slopes of two volcanoes and adjoining ridges on the southern side of the Valley of Mexico, where it is found only between 9,000 and 10,500 feet. Like Pentalagus, this species is the sole member of its genus. It is a small rabbit, rather dark, with ears that are small and rounded. The tail so rudimentary as to be invisible. It bears a striking, if superficial, resemblance to the pika. Like the pika, the volcano rabbit lives in burrows in rock piles and communicates frequently with a high-pitched, penetrating voice.

Very little is known of this odd little animal. We know that for its diet the volcano rabbit includes a local aromatic mint, and this is fortunate as it renders the meat more or less unpalatable. The Mexicans provide the species with complete protection, but it is encroachment on its habitat, plus casual killing by "urban" hunters who simply shoot the animal for target practice, or use it as dogfood.

Rabbits I Have Known and Loved

They were beyond intriguing to the very young child I then was, this nest-full of baby cottontails. Each tiny animal was so perfect in form, so very beautiful with darkly rich brown fur, large eyes, their thin and delicate ears laid back, their long whiskers trembling with the vibrancy of life.

I was four or five years of age, and already known in the neighborhood for my passion for nature and wildlife. My mother was the only one around who would be interested in helping animals, and so when some local kids found the babies they brought them to our home. My mother phoned all the experts she could think to call, back in those days, four and a half decades ago, with the bulk of literature and knowledge about wildlife rehabilitation had yet to happen. Indeed, there was, among experts, a near consensus that she'd never be able to raise them.

In fact she almost did, but behind her back some well-meaning children innocently fed the cottontails the wrong food, and they all died.

My mother was angry, not at the kids, but at herself, for letting it happen. She determined at that moment that if she was going to care for animals in need, she'd do it properly, or not at all. And although her efforts were mainly directed toward birds, particularly the difficult-to-care-for migratory insectivorous species, in the many years of hands-on work with wildlife that followed she also made it known that she would care for any cottontails.

In 1982, she decided that her asthma was so bad that she just couldn't do any more work of that type, but it was not to be. That summer I published the following article:

What could she do? My mother, suffering from asthma, had decided not to take in any more sick, injured, or orphaned wildlife -- the investment in time, effort, and health such animals required had to be deducted from environmental concerns involving whole populations of animals.

But here was a teenager at the door with four baby cottontails whose mother had been killed, at the nest, by a cat.

After 30 years of rescue and rehabilitation of wildlife, much of it pioneer, Mother had agreed with me that she just couldn't take in any more wildlings. But the boy had tried his best to help them with a neighbor's domestic rabbit, and it hadn't worked out. The two species are quite different and the orphans had been rejected.

So Mom took the cottontails and sent the boy back to look again: cottontails usually have litters of five. There was a fifth, injured and hidden beneath the remnants of the nest. He died the next day. Two of the remaining four were too young for solid food. They were fed formula from an eye dropper. They quickly adapted to this feeding technique, but the older ones were at that difficult stage when a taste for mother's milk gives way to a desire to nibble upon something green.

Fur Bags

Baby cottontails are rather like fur bags filled with animate, gelatinoid interiors controlled by unpredictable bursts of energy. Except for their heads, they seem almost boneless, and just when you think the soft, warm little creature in your hand is calm and complacent, he will suddenly contract or spurt forward, and quick reflexes are essential if you are to avoid being led on a chase that usually ends behind the refrigerator, the piano or the couch -- the big one that must weigh 600 pounds.

The weaning period is a particularly sticky time for both cottontail faces and human fingers but our furry foursome soon graduated to ground cracker, shredded carrot, alfalfa and bean sprouts, rabbit pellets, spinach, lettuce, clover, dandelion, plantain, sorrel, and just about anything from our garden that was tender, green, and growing.

The bunnies were kept in a large cardboard box in which there was a smaller box they used as their toilet. Rabbits, if allowed to be, are scrupulously clean. All four cottontails discovered they could jump out of the box on the same evening, an evening when no one was home, and while three were found before bedtime, the fourth didn't turn up until the next morning, when he was found huddled in the back of the fireplace.

Gently Pushed

When Mother released her cottontails at Lynde Shores Conservation Area, near Whitby, three seemed happy to go but the fourth held back, and had to be gently pushed into a world filled with great horned owls, marsh hawks, winter storms, foxes, and 12 gauge shotguns. But it was also a world full of green, growing things; sunshine; secret, brambly passageways; other cottontails and things more part of what should be a cottontail's home than can be found in the interior of a box or cage.

The day Mother released the cottontails she received a call for the Humane Society. They had five orphaned cottontails; would she take them? Having just successfully raised one brood, Mom felt obliged to try again. After two weeks in our care, two of the baby cottontails took sick. One promptly died but the other, when isolated from her siblings and given extra special care, made a complete recovery.

Last Monday they, too, left their newspaper-lined cardboard home for the larger world of Lynde Shores Conservation Area. It's a dangerous world in which the odds are heavily stacked against any individual baby cottontail surviving to full maturity. But some always do survive, and if, of a quiet morning when the sun is burning away the last tendrils of mist, you should visit Lynde Shores and see, sitting up amid the glowing green grass and clover, a young cottontail, his backlit ears a luminous pink, his whiskers quivering, there is really no reason not to believe that he might be one of ours.

"It's impossible to say no to five little bundles of fur"
The Toronto Star, Nature Trail. August 29, 1982

Of course the "orphans" who were constantly brought to her were seldom really orphans at all -- simply young animals found in the nest, often when a lawnmower left it exposed, and assumed to be orphaned or at increased risk, because of the disturbance. Educating people to leave such animals to the care of their real mother was a major part of helping them, but when that didn't work, my mother's record of successfully raising young cottontails became impressive. Each year of my youth and young adulthood, I shared my home with one or more litters of cottontails.

A bunnyhugger? The term is meant to be derogatory, as a description of anyone who cares about justice for animals, who has compassion for animals, who supports the concepts of establishing rights for animals, or is opposed to legal or institutionalized cruelty toward animals. I don't believe I've ever literally hugged a bunny, as a hug of any intensity would undoubtedly hurt them. But I plead guilty on all counts to being a bunnyhugger.

What's a Bunny, Anyway?

As I've sometimes been criticized for using the term "bunny," allow me to explain. The dictionary recognizes "bunny" as a "pet name" for a rabbit, especially a young one. In Scottish dialect it can mean a hare, rabbit, or squirrel, deriving from the term "bun," or tail. In English it may have common origin to "bun," meaning tightly coiled hair at the back of the head, or a roll of bread shaped like, well, a bun. In contemporary colloquial English it may refer, in the plural, to buttocks. It's certainly proper English to use "bunny" as an affectionate term for rabbits.

The cottontails we cared for were not "pets." On the contrary, we worked very hard to keep them from becoming too accustomed to us or other animals, such as dogs, who might be dangerous to them in the wild. The mortality rate in wild rabbits is very high, and so each cottontail released had less then a 50 percent chance at survival, but that would be true had the animal been entirely raised by the mother.

One fall night when I was about 12 years of age I was sitting at the dining room table, doing school homework, when I heard a loud, ghastly scream for the other side of the window. My parents and I rushed out into the dark garden. In the beam of our flashlight we found the distinctive tufts of rabbit fur, right under the window, where, moments earlier, a cottontail had been. The yard was fenced, but either a stray dog had managed to jump the fence, get in, grab the rabbit and leave, or a great horned owl had found the strength to carry off the rabbit. In hindsight the latter seems the less likely theory. Whatever happened, I was haunted by the concept that these peaceful little animals with their ever so beguiling features remaining silent through their lives, their first vocalization usually being their last, a anguished signal of a gentle life ended. I've heard that terrible scream only twice, since then.

Unlike many folks who share my passion for bunnies, I've had relatively little contact with domestic rabbits. An unforgettable exception was "Doggy."

One cold winter night, about thirty years ago, when the snow was deep I was driving along a rural road, not far from home, when, somehow, I spied a distinctive, dark form in a snow-filled ditch. It looked like a rabbit, but was three times too large to be a cottontail. It was even bigger than a snowshoe hare, not to be found in that area, and too short of body to be a European hare.

I stopped and went back. The huddled rabbit was obviously not a native species. I dropped to my stomach and crawled through the snow, slowly. The animal made no movement. Perhaps he had simply died and frozen in a sitting position. I came up behind him, and from above, as I was on the lip of the ditch. Rabbits' eyes are placed high on the sides of the heads to provide maximum vision ... the area above and behind being about as close to a blind spot as a rabbit has.

When within reach I made a quick grab. All hell broke loose as the rabbit jerked and kicked with desperate strength. But I had rescued a lot of wild animals, where the first rule is to hang on in spite of everything, immediately followed by the second rule, to gather in the animal and contain him so that neither you nor he is injured.

In the light of the car's interior I saw that I was holding a huge, gray rabbit; one of the domesticated varieties of Eurasian rabbit bred for meat. How he had wound up in the ditch I never did know, but I suspect he was close to freezing, and certainly not wise to the ways of concealment. If I could spot him from a car window and catch him bare-handed, what chance would he have keeping himself inconspicuous to a fox or great horned owl?

As I entered the house, an armful of gray rabbit pressed to my chest, my family members gave me that "now what?" look I had become used to seeing. We had a three-year-old human staying with us, just learning the intricacies of human speech. He took one look at the large rabbit, pointed, and said "Doggy!" and Doggy became the rabbit's improbable name.

In a sense Doggy educated me past what his wild relatives could do. He was, his obvious objection at the abrupt rudeness of our first encounter notwithstanding, a tame rabbit. No doubt he had been raised for meat, but such animals do not necessarily anticipate the bleakness of their future. Doggy would sit beside me on the couch, as I watched television and both of us nibbled from a bowl of popcorn. He would suddenly leap down and disappear into the dark recesses of our unfinished basement. There was a shower stall, never used, and all on his own Doggy had decided it was the perfect place to urinate, and, usually, defecate, as well. He was right. All we had to do was turn on the water to clean up after him.

Doggy was stubborn and insistent. He had one bad habit that rendered him dangerous to himself and the rest of the household: he liked to chew through electric cords. We always stopped him in time, but it meant he couldn't be left alone. An indoor hutch in the basement was a poor solution. I was depressed how quickly it filled with droppings and urine, and worried that this would be stressful to an otherwise fastidious animal. At the same time, we couldn't have cords chewed through. Eventually we were able to find a home where Doggy could have a large pen as a compromise. Perhaps he missed those nights on the couch, watching television or having his ear rubbed; on the other hand I hope he preferred the company of other rabbits in safe sanctuary where he could have continued freedom of movement without the near certainty of eventually electrocuting himself.

Rabbits are important features of folklore, although I admit that I never much cared for those tales wherein the rabbit is turned into a bunny-shaped human. Beatrix Potter was a wonderfully skilled wildlife artist, but I find I don't appreciate the rabbits she dressed, or made to speak in human language. The hare fares poorly in Aesop's story, "The Hare and the Tortoise," that survives to this day from its origins in the 5th century B.C. I met Richard Adams, many years ago, using the name recognition he derived from his brilliant novel, Watership Down, to protest the Canadian seal hunt. But while the writing carries the story, I admit, again, that stories where animals talk in human language are not my favorite.

What I like better than stories about rabbits are rabbits themselves. I feel sorry for the domesticated breeds, manipulated through careful selection to look cute, to serve as good animals to experiment upon, to be eaten, or to produce furs for garments to be worn by humans. Such unfortunate creatures, like all domesticated animals, are innocent beings deserving of the respect and compassion too often denied.

But when I think of rabbits I think of them in their natural forms, as they've evolved through time until the present. And when I think of "bunnies", I invariably think of cottontails.

Cottontails and Other Rabbits of North America: A Family Album

Cottontails have hopped their way through my life. The species I am most familiar with is the one with the widest range, the Eastern cottontail, Sylvilagus floridanus.

The eastern has a huge distribution, being found from New England west to Saskatchewan and south to Florida and Mexico. It has been introduced into the Pacific northwest. The subspecies found where I live, in southern Ontario, is S. f. mearnsii. Numerous other subspecies, each showing very minor variations in color and size, are found throughout the vast range of this eastern cottontail. But while the appearance of the animal changes from location to location, the eastern cottontail can be characterized as being one of the larger cottontails, with a fairly dark fur, a rufous patch on the back of the neck, and often a tiny white patch (as a child I called it a "diamond") in the middle of the forehead.

Most people, upon seeing any of the various members of the genus Sylvilagus, simply think "rabbit," or perhaps "cottontail." But to us cottontail devotees, it's a bit more complicated. To me one of the pleasures of viewing wild animals derives from being sensitive to variations in similar species. For example, the Eastern cottontail is almost identical to the New England Cottontail, S. transitionalis, which has a far more restricted range. The New England Cottontail usually does not have that white spot on the forehead, but normally does have a distinctive black spot between the ears. However such features can vary. Although the ranges overlap, the New England tends to like mountains, and follows the Appalachians down as far south as northern Georgia and Alabama. I think of transitionalis as being just a touch more rugged than floridanus. I've never had good enough of a look at a cottontail in the range of transitionalis to be sure that I've actually seen one.

I'm quite sure that I have encountered the desert cottontail, S. audubonii, in California and Arizona. It's comparable in size to the Eastern, but much grayer. Its common name notwithstanding, it ranges widely in plains, prairies, scrublands, and farmlands through much of the western U.S. and Mexico.

I am a little less sure that I've seen Nuttall's cottontail, S. nuttallii, also called the mountain cottontail. Nuttall's lives in higher elevations, where it is colder. Nuttall's cottontail is distinguished by having shorter, rounder ears than other cottontails. Smaller ear surfaces would reduce heat loss, making it easier for this rabbit to keep warm in the colder elevations of its native habitat. It's another of the grayer rabbits, in comparison to the rich, grizzled brown of eastern members of the genus.

I've certainly seen the pretty little brush rabbit, S. bachmani, one of the smallest cottontails. The brush rabbit is a compact cottontail, with relatively small hind feet and short hind legs. Ears and tail are also relatively small, color rather variable. I had my best looks at brush rabbits at pullouts along the coastal highway, near Big Sur, just before dawn. Well before the sun showed itself and the automobile increased to a degree extremely hazardous to such animals, these little rabbits had vanished from view.

Smallest of the cottontails is the aptly named pygmy rabbit, S. idahoensis. Possibly to help in snow this little bunny has broad and heavily haired hind feet, although they are not particularly large. The tail is small and rather buffy underneath, instead of the white that gives the genus its English name: cottontail. They are compact and rather gray in color.

The differences in the various cottontails may seem subtle, but they represent behavioral and physiological change from common ancestors, as each race and species filled within its ecological niche. Consider two of the most distinctive of cottontails, the marsh rabbit, S. palustris, and the swamp rabbit, S. aquaticus. The former is found in Florida and southern Alabama and Georgia, north up the inland waterways as far as Chesapeake Bay. The latter is found along the Gulf Coast north through the southeastern U.S. The swamp rabbit is the largest of the cottontails and very dark above, nicely contrasting with its white underparts. The marsh rabbit is a little smaller and has a grayish or brownish, but never white, belly. What is fascinating about these two rabbits is the ease with which they take to water. Any rabbit can swim, but marsh and swamp rabbits do so readily and often. Indeed, the first marsh rabbit I ever saw was swimming when I first spotted it, in Florida, and for a moment wondered what a muskrat was doing with such big eyes and long ears.

With our typically human-centered arrogance toward the non-human majority of our fellow animals, we might easily dismiss the distinctions between the various species and subspecies of cottontails as being of little importance, but each form is distinctive, in spite of some overlapping of food, range, and habitat preferences.

Eastern cottontails are the best studied of all members of the genus. It is known that they have wide population fluctuations, but it's not clearly understood why. There seems little indication that the density of the population is the determining factor in population size, leading to speculation that it is disease, food availability, or predation, or a combination of such factors, that determine the number of cottontails each year. While human hunters kill a great many eastern cottontails each year, other predators that have been found to take the species include raccoons, ring-tailed cats, martens, fishers, weasels, red foxes, gray foxes, coyotes, bobcats, feral domestic cats, red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered hawk, rough-legged hawk, Cooper's hawk, northern goshawk, golden eagle, northern harrier, and American crow.

A significant number of ectoparasites have been found on cottontails. Among the many ticks reported are those that are vectors for Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Ticks of the family Ixodidae, fleas of the families Pulicidae and Leptopsylliadae, and warbles of the family Cuterebridae are common external parasites. Internal parasites also occur. The eastern cottontail has been recorded to be the unwilling host of at least six distinct species of cestodes, fourteen kinds of nematodes and one trematode.

Of concern to hunters and wildlife rehabilitators alike is the fact that rabbits are known carriers of tularemia (Francisella tularemia), a rickettsial disease which can be passed on to other species of mammal, including humans, by ticks and fleas; by handling the flesh and blood or rabbits, or by eating improperly cooked rabbit meat. A 1952 study indicated that over 90 percent of human cases of tularemia in Illinois derived from the eastern cottontail.

In rabbits the disease is always fatal. When the disease progresses to a certain point, symptoms include a sluggish behavior, leaving the animals vulnerable to predation and subsequent transmission of the disease.

Younger cottontails, abroad when food choices are at their maximum, require food that contain more digestible energy and protein than are required by older animals. As the animal can't utilize all the energy of each plant eaten, the amount of "digestible energy" may be a limiting factor in survivability of cottontails living in the higher elevations or altitudes during late winter.

A study of eastern cottontails in New York State shows they eat many plants. Most significant of the woody food plants are apple, staghorn sumac, red maple, blackberry ,and red raspberry. The most important of the herbaceous food plants included Kentucky bluegrass, Canada bluegrass, timothy, quack grass, orchard grass, red clover, and wild carrot. As these are among the most common plants of lawns, hedgerows, and fields of the region, there is, at least in spring, summer, and fall, plenty of food for cottontails. The baby cottontails favored such succulent fare as dandelion and prickly lettuce, augmented by Rugel's plantain, curly dock, ragweed, and red clover. In short, an average suburban lawn, not sprayed with toxic pesticides and not too carefully groomed, provides a fine meal for the eastern cottontail.

Cottontails necessarily must switch from a predominately herbaceous diet in summer and fall to more woody plants in winter. Prime feeding times are from about four hours before sunrise until dawn, and for an hour or so after sunset.

Cottontails belong to the order Lagomorpha, and all members of the order are collectively known as Lagomorphs. While I've dwelled upon cottontails as signifying, to me, the "bunny," there is another, larger Lagamorph native to the area where I live, the handsome snowshoe hare, which is equally well known as the varying hare (Lepus americanus). This is a widely distributed species, found from Alaska to Newfoundland, as far north as the treeline, and south in the mountains of the west as far as northern California and northern New Mexico.

For me to see this species I must go north, into boreal forest. This is definitely a rugged, northern species, first named by European scientists in 1777 from specimens originating near Hudson Bay. No less than fifteen subspecies are recognized.

One significant difference between rabbits, like the cottontails, and hares, is that the former give birth to altricial young ... that is, young who are quite helpless, with eyes still closed ... while the latter give birth to precocial young ... that is, babies who can move about and have their eyes open. Rabbits make nests in which the young live during the earliest parts of their lives; hares do not. Additionally hares are, on average, larger.

This beautiful animal is superbly adapted to life in the cold, northern forests. The name "snowshoe" hare derives from the huge hind feet these hares have. These feet provide a broad surface that distributes the weight of the animal more evenly, making it less likely that the hare will flounder in snow. In short, the feet act like snowshoes.

The hare is famous for being snow white in winter, and gray or brownish gray in summer. It is this variation that is the origin of the other common English name, "varying" hare.

However, two western subspecies, L. a. oregonus and L. a. washingtonii, often remain brown throughout the winter. In between, when the rabbit is molting from one distinctive coat to another, it takes on a patchwork appearance that can often mimic the ground when there are patches of snow, with earth or leaves showing through.

If you look very closely at a snowshoe hare in winter you will see that the hair is not quite as white as it appears at even a short distance. The outermost part is white, but the middle part is born while the base is black or dark gray. This is in distinction from the closely related Arctic hare, which is found on the open tundra above the treeline and has an entirely white winter coat.

There is also an Alaskan hare, L. othus, which is found only in western Alaska and is closely related to the mountain hare, L. timidus, which is found in northern Europe and Asia.

The snowshoe hare is well known for the cyclic nature of population increases and decreases. Some winters predators will kill as many as 40 percent of the local snowshoe hare population. The snowshoe is a major source of food in the northern winter. It is astounding the number of wildlife species reported to prey upon the snowshoe hare. These include the short-tailed shrew, the mink, the lynx, the red fox, the coyote, the black bear, the bobcat, domestic dogs, domestic cats, great horned owls, northern goshawks, barred owl, and ravens. Of these, in Alberta one study pinpointed the lynx, coyote, great horned owl, and northern goshawks as being responsible for over 70 percent of the hares who died during the winter.

Of these the lynx, whose range generally coincides with that of the snowshoe hare, seems particularly dependent upon the hare to survive. The lynx is highly carnivorous. When I was a kid we were taught that when snowshoe hares increased, the lynx increased, and then the hares would decrease and so would the lynx, all in neatly timed cycles. Like most things in nature it's not quite that simple. Certainly one study showed that in a period of hare abundance, the snowshoe hare constituted 100 percent of the lynx's diet, but in times of hare scarcity, over 50 percent of the big cats' diets consisted of other species. However, lynx health is ultimately dependent upon the hares.

A study in Minnesota showed snowshoe hares reaching peak abundance approximately every ten years. Populations as high as 38.6 hares per ha., and as low as 0.12 hares per acre have been recorded. One theory has it that as hare numbers increase, the amount of food that is available per animal decreases until there isn't enough. Meanwhile lynx and other predators, with an abundance of hares, have enhanced survival. In response to decreases in food, hares tend to have smaller litters, shorter breeding seasons, and lower pregnancy rates, and face the larger number of predators that are a result of the original increase in hares. Predation reduced the hare population below "food-dictated potential," which gives the vegetation that is the hares' diet a chance to recover. Predators' own reproductive and survival rates feel the impact of the decrease in hares, and as there becomes fewer predators and more food the hares start their increase, in a cycle that goes on and on.

In severe winters these opportunistic rabbits have been known to feed on carrion. They will also eat their own droppings, which, when soft, are high in certain B class vitamins.

The "mad" leaping and "dancing" of European hares in breeding season gave rise to the expression, "mad as a March hare." The "dance" is actually the activity of the female hare warding off unwanted advances by males.

Even cottontails perform these rituals and I've often enjoyed seeing them "dance" on the moonlit snow during a silent night in late winter. But snowshoe hares throw in an odd behavior: the pair will urinate on each other. This happens when one hare leaps above the other, and urinates on the one below while in midair. Don't ask me why!

The only other rabbit native to my part of the continent, in the lower Great Lakes region, is an import, the European hare, L. europaeus, originally brought to the New World from Germany. The Ontario population derived from seven does and two bucks who escaped from captivity on an island and crossed a frozen river near Brantford, Ontario, in 1912. They have spread out through the region. There was also an introduction into New England, which did not seem to fair nearly as well.

In size and shape the European hare is the equivalent of something missing from where I live: the jackrabbits. There are four native North American jackrabbits, the black-tailed jackrabbit, L. californicus, the white-tailed jack rabbit, L. townsendii, the antelope jackrabbit, L. alleni, and the little-known white-sided jackrabbit, L. callotis.

Jackrabbits are large, lean, lanky rabbits with very long ears and powerful back legs. They are found throughout most of the west and midwest of North America, with the white-sided native to Mexico, its range just touching the U.S. where the borders of Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico come together. There is a more southern species, the Tehuantepec jackrabbit, L. flavigularis.

The jackrabbits are mostly animals of open plains, prairies, deserts, and farmlands.

And in the interest of completeness, I won't end a description of North American bunnies without mentioning the most un-rabbitlike of them all, the American pika, Ochotona princeps. A member of the family Ochotonidae, they don't like the least like a rabbit ... a guinea pig maybe ... but not a rabbit. They are small animals with rounded ears and small feet. They have no external tail. They live in mountainous terrain, with relatives living in high country in Asia.

The pika found in Alaska is sometimes considered to be a distinct species, O. collaris. There are numerous other members of the genus Ochotona found in various parts of Asia.

The red hares of the genus Pronolagus are found in Africa. The Asam rabbit, Caprolagus hispidus, of Asia, is the sole member of its genus, as is the European rabbit (above) and the short-eared rabbit, Nesolagus netscheri, of Sumatra. There are no rabbits native to South America or Australia.

Wherever they are found, rabbits are endlessly interesting and endlessly deserving our compassion, respect and protection.