Rabbits: The Animal Answer Guide

Introduction

A few years ago we walked through Spain’s Doñana National Park hoping to catch a glimpse of a very rare cat. Doñana is home to a few of the last Iberian lynx, a beautiful cat many experts believe will be the first felid to go extinct since the sabertooth. We were thrilled to spot one in the dusky light and even follow it for a bit as it set out on an evening hunt. A few minutes later, we were equally excited to see a European rabbit, the lynx’s near-exclusive prey and one of the world’s most abundant and widespread mammals. It is an ecological irony, that, thanks to human efforts, these rabbits now occupy most of the rest of Western Europe, Australia, parts of South America , North Africa, and more than 800 islands around the world, but they are disappearing in Iberia, their sole home for many thousands of years. This experience piqued our curiosity about European rabbits and then about their kin, the other 90 or so species of rabbits, hares, and pikas that make up the mammalian order Lagomorpha. Having spent years exploring the world of predators—cats and other carnivores—it was time to take a closer look at some of their most important prey. Lagomorphs feed many carnivores, including many people. They also fire our imaginations. From the dawn of history, rabbits and hares have figured in stories, symbols, and myths of people around the world, with at least one species native to every continent except Australia and Antarctica . From “the rabbit in the moon” of Asian folklore and hare tricksters in literature from around the globe to Peter Rabbit and Bugs Bunny, rabbits have long loomed large in the human psyche, all the more so for their association with sexuality and fertility, from representing Aphrodite to their personification as Playboy bunnies. Yet while every small child knows what a rabbit looks like, and hundreds of thousands of Americans keep rabbits as pets, few people know much about lagomorphs as wild animals living outside of cabbage patches. Fewer still know anything about the diverse forms they come in, or of their importance in ecosystems, or that several of their kind are among the most endangered species on Earth. It’s difficult to convince people that rabbits are in trouble because, if nothing else, everyone “knows” that rabbits breed like rabbits. We hope our book will help change that misperception. Apart from this, lagomorphs are fascinating in their own right. In this book, we discuss all aspects of the lagomorphs: what is known and what remains to be learned about the diverse species; their anatomy and physiology, Introduction xiii evolutionary history, ecology and behavior, and conservation; and their historic and contemporary relationships with people, as both wild and domesticated animals. We hope that as readers learn about these animals they will find them as intriguing as we do and will be inspired to join efforts to conserve them. xiv Introduction Critically endangered Iberian lynx (Lynx pardina) rely on European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), which are near threatened in Iberia but abundant elsewhere. Lynx photo © John Seidensticker; rabbit photo © Paolo Lombardo Rabbits: The Animal Answer Guide This page intentionally left blank ...