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
Rabbits are the “feeder fish” of land ecosystems.
(aka there’s a ton of them but like… everything eats them.)
Another contributing factor here is that rabbits can display some tendencies similar to [embryonic diapause](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X24000418) even though they don’t necessarily fall into this category:
> A ‘diapause-like’ state can also apparently be induced in nondiapause mammals (sheep and rabbit), but this has not been able to be replicated. Regardless, this suggests that at least some of the essential mechanisms that control embryo viability at this stage are conserved in all mammals.
My cat was sitting on a rabbit last week. She didn’t kill it, just sat on it. My cat is weird.
Lots and lots of things eat rabbits. Also, they don’t go out of their way to graze in wide open areas without cover/hiding places like mowed lawns.
Come to my neighbourhood. 10-12 cayotees died recently in the neighborhood because someone had put poison is the close by gulf club with a creek (different story for another time). This year there are so many rabbits outside you see them scatter as you walk in the park.
I regularly see rabbits on urban greenway trails in Portland. I can often see rabbits foraging in my parents back yard and occasionally they will get pieces of rabbits left on their driveway.
Cannon Beach (also in Oregon) has an [exploding population of feral rabbits](https://www.opb.org/news/article/cannon-beach-has-a-rabbit-problem/). They’re kind of a tourist attraction.
You guys are super lucky to have rabbits in your local biome. We don’t have wild rabbits in my country.
Rabbits reproduce so much because they’re born small, weak and dumb as hell. They’re kind of a self-limiting population in the wild.
That said, I once lived on an island with no natural rabbit predators, and sure enough – [bunny hijinks ensued](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna429186). They even have [an Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/langleyhops/)
1. Wild rabbits are brown and can camoflauge easily. Rabbits also create complex underground warrens so they can hide from predators.
2. Rabbits are most active at dawn and dusk. You may not see them at other times.
3. I don’t know if this is the case in the US, but in Australia they have previously released deadly viruses out in order to kill the wild rabbit populations. This can also kill domesticated rabbits, especially those that are not vaccinated.
4. Predators – anything from cats, foxes, birds, dogs, and even other omnivorous animals.
24 rabbits were introduced to a private property in Australia in the 1850’s for sport and they multiplied to an estimated 1 billion population by 1880 as there were little to no natural predators.
Hopefully rabbits are native to the area where you live in the US and the natural course of predators, disease, humans etc keep their population in check.
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