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
In most parts of the world, there are more predators for rabbits than you might think. A notable exception to this is Australia, where colonists and prisoners first imported them as a food source. The rabbits caused a severe environmental crisis.
If you live in the north and have cold, snowy, winters, enough food is a huge issue for rabbits. Until snow, they have plenty, but after that they must eat whatever they can find, from twigs to tree bark. Only 30% of the rabbit population survives northern winters
There probably are predators. At the very least, there are cats and dogs that aren’t 100% supervised all the time. Maybe they aren’t everywhere, but foxes, coyotes, hawks, and owls are common in many places, even some dense urban areas. Add in non-animal hazards, like cars, poison traps meant for other rodents, lawnmowers….
As an Aussie I can absolutely say that you don’t want lots of rabbits. They will fuck up the ecosystem bad if allowed to populate too far.
The US has many predators that keep rabbit populations in check, and this is why they are relatively low numbers. The opposite is Australia, fewer predators plus an ideal environment equal massive population. We only got them kind of under control through diseases
I live in a medium sized city in the US. The neighborhood I grew up in, for 20+ years I never saw a rabbit. Just 3 minutes down the road, my new neighborhood, rabbits EVERYWHERE, always. It just depends on where they make their habitat. They are also nocturnal, small, and fast, so you may not see them often.
Our neighborhood is infested with rabbits, but it’s also infested with coyotes so there’s a good balance. Rabbits eat grass, coyotes eat rabbits, coyotes get hit by cars, nature.
Predators is a big one. Plus when a rabbit population gets too dense, a disease called myxomatosis often rips through it, killing a significant portion.
Rabbits often den in people’s backyards with dogs, I think they do this with the hope that the dogs will keep other predators away.
The dogs kill a lot of baby rabbits by sniffing out and digging up their dens
In my city you see a year of plenty of rabbit sightings, follow by a year of plenty of fox or coyote sightings. It’s the circle of life.
Maybe it’s just where you live because I can’t walk outside without seeing bunnies all over. I saw three this afternoon during a 15 min walk with my dog.
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