<- Back To Species Index

Ancestor: Woolly Rabbit

Size: Species vary between 40 cm - 75 cm nose to tail.

Dietary Needs: Typically these rabbits are herbivores, eating mainly tender greens such as young grass shoots and herbaceous plants. They also eat some grass roots and storage nodules of some mountain catnip descendants, and mountain elderberries in season. As summer turns to autumn they resort to tougher plant matter to eat, such as older leaves and coarser grass. However winter presents a lack of food, and these rabbits don't hibernate. While they do burrow, they still get hungry and go out in search of food during non-hazardous weather, and are less able to digest tough, often dying or ragged plant matter than their sheep-like cousins. This is when they will resort to other animals as a source of food. Although not as expert as cats at actually catching and killing their food, they are certainly capable of outpacing other animals in pursuit. But their top prey is not mice and birds (those come close second and third), it's their own species. In the summer their numbers exploded in spite of hunting by cats, now the overpopulated rabbits compete by killing and eating each other.

Meat is not their preferred food. After a few weeks of it, it can cause indigestion. It's also a gamble as they are more susceptible to foodborne disease than full-time predators. As soon as tender young shoots emerge in the spring again, their diet switches back to a herbivorous one.

Life Cycle: During the winter social bonds are nonexistant. They are simply predator and prey to one another.

When the mountain snow melts enough to allow the first spring greens to appear, the attitude these rabbits have with each other changes. They become much more placid and  stop their violent behaviour. Juveniles entering their first spring as new adults are far more wary, they were targeted as prey the most over the winter. The rabbits secrete calming pheromones that eventually soothe the nerves of others of their own kind, and soothe themselves just enough to be functional around each other.

Mating, birthing and kit-rearing occurs throughout the spring and summer to no strict schedule. A female can raise up to three litters in a good year.  Males usually fight over females, but females not so much over males. Females instead fight over limited stable burrowing sites. Male fights can get quite violent and bloody, and they have been known to kill over a female. Summer cannibalism can result from male-male fights, and also from adults (name or female) discovering unguarded kits that are not their own. This cannibalism is more symbolic and makes a statement to other rabbits, as very little of the meat gets eaten.

Kits are born in a burrow blind and helpless. The female, fattened up from gorging on spring or summer vegetation, fasts in the burrow as she nurses her kits for up to two weeks.  After this the kits are able to see and follow their mother around, and don't leave her side until they're about a month-and-a-half to two months old. They can become independent at quite a small stage of growth, which allows the mother to raise more litters in a year. Kits that survive are the most inconspicuous of them, but genetic variation results in some kits that are not so careful, who become fodder for local predators or for older adults of their own kind in the winter.

Other: The reason they are called "summer" rabbits is because of their annual boom and bust cycle of reproduction and death. In summer these rabbits are so numerous they strip pasture and overcrowd spaces. Cats are never without prey, there are always plenty more. Not so true in winter, when the bulk weakest of the rabbits find themselves without enough food. What's more, the strongest and most motivated of them kill and eat the smallest and weakest. It is a true test for juveniles, who must stay elusive to make it to the next spring, when they will contribute towards repopulation. By mid winter they are a rare sight, a stark contrast to the sight of them carpeting grassy slopes in summer.

What triggers the cannibalistic behaviour is a combination of harsh environmental conditions, lack of food and overcrowding of their own species. What usually puts a stop to the behaviour in late winter and early spring is the availability of other foods combined with the scarcity of encounters they have with their own kind at that time of year.

To survive high elevations at low air pressure, they pass the air through a labyrinth of chambers where their olfactory receptors are distributed in their nose and inside their head. Some of this system has been repurposed for oxygen uptake. It only supplements the use of lungs, which are still by far the main means of oxygen to transfer from air to the blood. Secondary to this, it helps warm air entering the lungs, and captures heat from air leaving the lungs. This allows them to be more active than other mammals in their high elevation environment.