Named for its white, cottony-looking tail, the Eastern Cottontail is 15–19 inches long (38–48 cm) and weighs 2–4 pounds (0.9–1.8 kg). They’ve also been introduced in areas of the Southwest and Northwest. They inhabit southeastern Canada, the Great Plains, East Coast, and down to South America. They’re all similar in appearance and habits and primarily differ only in size, habitat, and range.Įastern Cottontails, Sylvilagus floridanus, are in the order Lagomorpha (lag-oh-MOR-fuh) and family Laporidae. So we’ve focused on it, but, really, most of what you’ll read here applies to all cottontails. The most widespread rabbit in the United States is the Eastern Cottontail. Nine of them are cottontails that inhabit North America, Mexico, and Central and South America. It’s so unlike other rabbit fossils that researchers believe it developed that way due to its isolation. It was six times the size of the four-pound cottontails of today, had smaller eyes and ears, dug for its food, and didn’t hop. In 2011 a gigantic fossil was unearthed on the small island Mallorca, off the coast of Spain. It was a rabbit that hopped and was very similar to those of today, but with smaller ears and a longer tail. The oldest complete rabbit fossil, found in 2008 in India, dates back 53 million years to the Eocene Epoch. Even those who scheme to prevail and often lose in an ongoing garden war with them. For most of us, it’s a cottontail we see doing all that damage, but, children love them–think of Thumper in Bambi and Walt Disney’s Bugs Bunny–and most adults, too. Then there’s the leveling they can do to a vegetable patch-that alone can leave a hardworking gardener in dispair. Pity the poor rabbits.įor that alone, it would seem they deserve some easy pickings here and there in their very brief lives, but they can be a troubling nuisance when they nibble on elegant specimen grasses, snip tender branches off precious shrubs or bite off the flowers of prized plants. At least 50 percent never leave the nest. They’re lucky if they live for two or three years, even though their potential lifespan is eight to 10 years. They’re prey for just about everything that’s large enough to catch and hold onto them.
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