I live in a small city in the US, where it’s grass everywhere. There’s lots of rabbits, but why aren’t there more? They eat grass, and there’s clearly more grass than they can eat at their current population size. There’s no significant predators to speak of, I don’t think. They breed legendarily quickly, there’s even an expression about it. So if food isn’t a constraint, predators aren’t a constraint, what is the constraint? I would think they should just increase population until we don’t have to cut our grass anymore.
In: Biology
I think you’re underestimating how many predators there are. Not to mention cars. Rabbits get eaten by coyotes, bob cats, and any bird of prey.
Also, there’s probably more rabbits than you’d think. They’re just good at hiding.
There are rabbits everywhere.
There are also things that eat rabbits everywhere.
The net result is that you don’t end up seeing rabbits everywhere.
Pesticides; car accidents; predators (like feral cats) all keep the population in check.
Unfortunately 44% of wild rabbits die in under 6 months of birth
There _are_ rabbits everywhere. Sometimes they’re whole, healthy, and alive. But a lot of the time they’re in bits and pieces in the stomachs of other animals.
Being in the middle of the food chain is a whole different lifestyle.
In my last home we had rabbits. Some years we saw a lot of them. Other years there were fewer rabbits; those years we tended to see more foxes.
As other point out, there are rabbits everywhere, just not necessarily alive and intact. And when they are, not necessarily visible to you.
As a counterpoint you get Australia, which didn’t have natural rabbit predators, and there the situation turned out precisely as you imagine it should have been where you live. The became effectively a biblical plague. Same with mice, which turn out in tidal waves.
This spring/ early summer had absolutely huge numbers of rabbits in the all around Boston, MA area. I would at least 5x if not 10x the normal amount. Not sure if the number have been coming down in recents weeks or whether I’ve been just hiding inside due to the weather.
> There’s no significant predators to speak of, I don’t think
> They breed legendarily quickly, there’s even an expression about it.
They breed quickly because they do have a lot of predators. Only about 15% of rabbits reach adulthood.
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Grass is actually not a primary food source from them. It’s kind of a last resort. If you see them in your yard, they’ll go for clover, dandelions, your garden, pretty much anything before eating grass.
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