Cottontail rabbits (fig. 1) are so well known that little need be said
of their habits. They breed several times each year during the warmer
months, the litters averaging five or six young. The nest is usually
placed in a hollow or depression of the ground, often in open fields or
meadows. It is composed of dead grass and warmly lined with fur which
the female pulls from her own body. The male rabbit takes no part in
caring for the young, and the female weans them as soon as they are able
to leave the nest. These animals breed so rapidly that in spite of many
natural enemies, and of the fact that they are hunted for human food,
they often become numerous enough to inflict serious losses on farmers
and fruit growers in many parts of the United States (fig. 2).
Cottontail rabbits eat all sorts of herbage--leaves, stems, flowers, and
seeds of herbaceous plants and grasses--and leaves, buds, bark, and
fruits of woody plants or trees. They usually prefer the most succulent
foods, as young shoots, tender garden vegetables, clover, alfalfa, and
fallen ripe fruits; but they exhibit also a remarkable delicacy of
taste in their selection of certain varieties of cultivated plants and
in their neglect of others of the same species. Prof. C. V. Piper
reports that in Oregon rabbits ate Arabian alfalfa down to the ground,
while they did little or no damage to other varieties grown in
surrounding plats. Prof. C. A. Mooers, of the Tennessee Agricultural
Experiment Station, reports similar observations in regard to their
taste for soy beans, stating that they greatly relish the mammoth yellow
variety and that it is practically the only one that suffers from their
depredations. When favorite foods are absent rabbits resort to whatever
is available. It is during summer droughts or when deep snows cut off
ordinary supplies that the animals attack the bark of growing trees or
shrubs.
[Illustration Fig. 1.--Cottontail rabbit in its "form."]