Mammals
Snowshoe Hare
Lepus americanus · also called snowshoe hares, varying hare
Bounding across a snow-covered forest floor, a snowshoe hare’s oversized hind feet keep it gliding easily over drifts that would slow down almost any predator following behind, its brilliant white winter coat blending seamlessly into the surrounding snow.
Overview
The snowshoe hare, Lepus americanus, is a forest-dwelling herbivore native to coniferous and mixed forest habitat across a broad range of Canada, Alaska, and the northern United States. Its distinctive snowshoe-like hind feet, seasonal coat colour change, and foundational role in one of North America’s best-documented predator-prey population cycles make it one of the more ecologically significant mammals of the northern forest.
A hare increasingly out of step with its own snow
Timed by day length rather than actual weather, the snowshoe hare’s seasonal white coat is now sometimes arriving before, or outlasting, the snow it evolved to match, leaving hares conspicuously exposed as climate change shortens the snow season in parts of its range.
Status
Least Concern, widespread and stable across suitable forest habitat throughout Canada, Alaska, and the northern United States, with numbers naturally fluctuating in multi-year cycles.
Snowshoe Hare: common questions
Why is it called the snowshoe hare?
This species has unusually large hind feet that distribute its weight over snow, functioning much like natural snowshoes and allowing it to move across deep snow considerably more easily than predators with smaller, less specialised feet, a clear adaptation reflected directly in its common name.
Why does the snowshoe hare change colour throughout the year?
This species moults from a brown summer coat to a white winter coat and back again each year, a seasonal camouflage strategy triggered primarily by day length rather than temperature, helping it blend into snow in winter and vegetation in summer.
How is climate change affecting the snowshoe hare?
As climate change shortens the reliable snow season in parts of its range, individuals of this species can end up with a white winter coat against bare, snowless ground for a period each year, a mismatch that makes them considerably more visible and vulnerable to predators during that time.
Why do lynx populations rise and fall along with snowshoe hare populations?
This species undergoes dramatic multi-year population cycles and serves as the primary food source for the Canada lynx in much of its range, so lynx numbers tend to rise and fall closely in step with hare abundance, a well-documented predator-prey population cycle.