Mammals
Rabbit
Oryctolagus cuniculus and relatives · also called European rabbit, coney, bunny
A rabbit is a small grazing animal built entirely around not being eaten: eyes that see almost all the way around its head, ears that pivot toward danger, powerful hind legs, a network of escape burrows, and a breeding rate that stays ahead of the losses. It is not a rodent, it re-eats its own soft droppings to survive on grass, and the European species is at once a beloved pet, a Spanish conservation priority, and one of the most destructive invasive mammals in history.
Overview
Rabbits are members of the family Leporidae, in the order Lagomorpha with the hares and pikas — not rodents. There are around 30 species, including the European rabbit, the American cottontails, the tiny pygmy rabbit, and endangered oddities like the volcano rabbit and Amami rabbit. All are herbivores that ferment grass and leaves in an oversized hindgut and re-ingest the soft caecotrophs to extract more nutrition.
Bred for the byword
Only the European rabbit was domesticated, by Roman and medieval European farmers, and every pet and meat breed from the Netherland Dwarf to the Flemish Giant is that one species. It breeds startlingly fast — a 30-day pregnancy, up to a dozen young, and conception again within hours of birth.
Beloved and catastrophic
In its native Iberia the European rabbit is now Endangered, down over 90% from myxomatosis and rabbit haemorrhagic disease, which has knocked on to the Iberian lynx and Spanish imperial eagle that eat it. Introduced to Australia from 24 animals in 1859, it reached the hundreds of millions in 50 years, stripping vegetation, driving native mammals extinct, and forcing a century of control with fences, warren ripping, and released viruses.
Status
As a group, Least Concern, but with a decreasing overall trend and sharp regional contrasts — invasive and abundant in much of the world, collapsing at home, and with several localised species Endangered.
Rabbit: common questions
What is the difference between a rabbit and a hare?
They are close relatives in the same family but differ in body, behaviour, and how their young are born. Hares are generally larger and leaner, with longer ears and longer hind legs built for speed, and they live above ground in a simple surface scrape called a form. Rabbits are smaller and stockier and most species dig or use burrows, living in colonies. The clearest difference is the young. Hares are born fully furred, with open eyes, able to move within minutes, because they have nowhere to hide. Rabbits are born naked, blind, and helpless in the safety of a lined nest chamber. Jackrabbits are actually hares, and the Belgian hare is actually a breed of domestic rabbit, so the common names are not always reliable.
Why do rabbits eat their own poop?
Because plant food is hard to digest and one pass through the gut is not enough. A rabbit ferments its food in a large pouch called the caecum, where bacteria break down fibre and produce protein, B vitamins, and fatty acids. Some of that nutrition would be lost in the droppings, so the rabbit produces two types of pellet. The familiar hard, round, dry pellets are true waste. The other type, soft dark clusters called caecotrophs, are taken directly from the anus and swallowed whole, sending the partially digested food through the system a second time. A rabbit prevented from doing this, for instance by obesity or dental pain, becomes malnourished even on a good diet.
Are rabbits rodents?
No, though they were classified as rodents until the early 20th century and are still often lumped with them. Rabbits, hares, and pikas belong to a separate order, Lagomorpha. The giveaway is the teeth. Rodents have a single pair of upper incisors, while lagomorphs have a second, much smaller pair of peg teeth sitting right behind the main uppers. Lagomorphs are also strictly herbivorous, whereas many rodents are omnivores. Rabbits and rodents do share the ever-growing front teeth and the general small-herbivore lifestyle, and genetic work places the two orders as fairly close cousins within a group called Glires.
How did rabbits become such a problem in Australia and New Zealand?
European rabbits were brought to Australia with the First Fleet in 1788 as food, but the population explosion is traced to 1859, when a landowner near Geelong in Victoria released 24 wild rabbits for sport shooting. With abundant grass, few predators adapted to them, and a mild climate that allows near year-round breeding, they spread across the southern two-thirds of the continent in about 50 years, reaching an estimated 600 million by the 1920s. They devastated native vegetation, competed with and helped wipe out several small native mammals, and caused severe soil erosion. Control has used a 1,800 kilometre rabbit-proof fence, warren destruction, poisoning, and the deliberate release of the myxoma virus in 1950 and rabbit haemorrhagic disease in 1995, each of which cut numbers sharply before partial resistance developed.