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
116 comments already but I just want to add, mowed lawn is not rabbit habitat. In the US it’s not native, and its a monoculture of one species so herbivores can’t get a diverse diet. But more importantly, short mowed grass is super exposed, for a prey animal that has predators on foot and in the sky. Natural grassland has grasses 1-3 feet tall. A rabbit on a lawn is a sitting duck
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