Chris Smith - Photographer

THE RABBIT.
(Oryctolagus cuniculus)

The rabbit can be found everywhere in central Europe to the Carpathians, Australia and New Zealand, it is distributed throughout Great Britain, and can be found wherever there is grass.
Sexes are alike, but the male (buck) has a shorter, rounder head. Length, (head and body) between 18-20 inches. Females can have 6 or more teats. Fur of rabbits was once used regularly for clothing, and was dyed to imitate other furs.
Rabbits can have 4-8 broods a years, or 3-9 young in each, the gestation period is 28 days. Unlike hares, young rabbits are born naked and blind with closed ears. Eyes open around 11 days, ears 12 days. Youngsters can run after 2 weeks and are self supporting in a month. Before breeding the doe (female) usually digs a new breeding hole, a nest is built and lined with fur from her body, leaves and fern fronds. The doe leaves the young in the nest, sealing the entrance after every visit. Left un-hunted a wild rabbit can live 7 or 8 years.
Young are born in all months. Does alone attend the young, males are promiscuous, but do sometimes help with the nest building. The main entrance to a rabbit burrow dips then rises to a central chamber, from this radiates other small bolt holes to the surface. Several burrows can be connected in one warren.
Rabbits in most situations spend their day underground, or in thick cover of bracken, gorse, turnips etc, except in very warm weather when they will lie out in forms. At night rabbits feed, coming out cautiously alone well trodden paths, they are intensely timid.
When being pursued by say a stoat, they have been known to run only a few yards, then close their eyes and await death, screaming in terror. However there are other records that show they will fight off stoats and weasels.
So prolific is the destruction caused by rabbits, that farmers, landowners and their ‘agents’ have the in-alienable right to kill them. Rabbits were once a valuable food source for humans; their main enemies are man, foxes, stoats, weasels, cats and birds of prey.
Rabbits eat mainly grass, also any vegetable matter, and very few plants are ‘rabbit proof’. Rabbits re-swallow their dung, as do hares.
Their voice is a low ‘huck’, repeated in pleasure, they have also a low growl, and as an alarm signal they will stamp with their hind legs, both underground and above. They scream when wounded, hurt or attacked.
There are many colour variations in wild rabbits, white, fawn, black, silver-grey and a mixture of any of these.