Rabbits: The Animal Answer Guide

5 Rabbit Ecology

84 Where do rabbits live? All lagomorphs have two fundamental requirements for their living space: they need places to shelter and places to eat in close proximity, often but not always in a mosaic of shelter sites interspersed with feeding sites. The areas occupied by lagomorphs—either their home ranges or territories —must contain both of these or the animals simply can’t live there. For just a few species, such as the swamp, marsh, and riverine rabbits, water is also essential. Shelter provides both protection from predators and a way to keep warm or cool. Places to shelter means different things to different species. For talus-living pikas, obviously, it means a talus field and for burrowing pikas, areas of soil appropriate for digging burrows. Good soil for digging burrows is also important to European rabbits, which tend to prefer sandy soil but burrow in many other soil types as well, and to pygmy rabbits, which need deep, loose soil for their underground burrows as well as the shelter of sagebrush for their surface activities. For cottontails, shelter can be found in brush piles, under herbaceous or shrubby vegetation, in hedgerows , in briar thickets, or under fallen trees—most species don’t seem to be very fussy about the form of the cover so long as it provides the shelter they need. The African rock rabbits rely on rocky outcrops for their shelter. Hares, like cottontails, use a variety of shelter types, from the hedgerows used by European and mountain hares in agricultural land to boulders in the barren landscapes occupied by arctic hares. Dense brushy cover is key to the habitat selection of snowshoe hares, and they thus prefer young forests with dense understory vegetation. New England cottontails also need the dense Chapter 5 Rabbit Ecology 85 Rabbit Ecology understory found in young forests, and the maturation of forests in the northeastern part of the United States is contributing to their decline. Similarly, with some exceptions—such as the pygmy rabbit, which relies on sagebrush—the plant species composition available in a particular area appears to be less important than that there are enough edible plants of any kind at all available throughout the year. This dietary flexibility accounts in part for the wide distribution of eastern cottontails (and cottontails in general ) and some hares, as well as the ability of European rabbits and European hares to successfully colonize the far-flung places to which they have been introduced. John Flux and Renate Angermann been pointed out, for instance, that there is not a single plant species common to New Zealand and Britain but European hares introduced from Britain to New Zealand thrive. Lagomorphs generally live in relatively stable home ranges whose boundaries encompass sheltering and feeding areas. In general, home range size varies with body size in lagomorphs, at least among the three groups. Pika ranges are measured in tenths of hectares, those of rabbits in a few hectares, generally 1 to 4 (about 2.5 to 10 acres), and those of hares in tens or hundreds of hectares, generally 10 to 300 (25 to 740 acres). Apart from body size, the home ranges of hares are larger because most hares live in open grassland habitats where they use their running ability to elude predators , unlike rabbits, which rely on quick dashes to cover. Within groups, a variety of other factors appear to be more important than does body size alone. In territorial species, home ranges are often larger than the areas individuals defend, which tend to be focused on shelter. For instance, American pikas defend territories of around 500 square meters (0.12 acres or roughly one-tenth of a football field), but their home ranges, which include areas American pikas and many other pika species live among piles of loose rock called talus. Photo © Andrew Smith 86 Rabbits: The Animal Answer Guide for foraging away from talus where they shelter, may be twice or more as large. Similarly, the family-defended territories of alpine pikas are smaller than their home ranges. European rabbits may also defend a small core area around burrows but forage further afield. Once an adult pika, rabbit, or hare settles in a home range or territory, it very rarely leaves to find a new home. In many species, home ranges shrink and expand seasonally. For instance, during the breeding season, the home ranges of male eastern cottontails often expand...