Wildlife
Rabbits came originally from south west Europe and north west Africa. Deliberate introduction to many countries has been so successful that rabbits are often considered as pests, owing to the vast ecological and agricultural damage they can cause. Yet they remain a economically important mammal species for food, fur and so on. The grass and plants they graze at dawn and dusk are of such poor nutritional value that rabbits eat their faeces to squeeze every last bit of remaining nourishment. Thumping their back legs sends a warning to others that one of their numerous predators is about.
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Deadly dancing
There's nothing like a bit of hypnotic dancing to help catch prey 10 times your own size.
Is a stoat's frenzied dance really a clever attempt to help it bring down its much larger prey? Or has this one just been at the catnip? Sure enough, it seems that rabbits are rendered almost catatonic by the stoat's antics. Keeping the frantic dance up allows the stoat to to get closer and closer until it's within reach and can pounce on the enchanted rabbit.
Alien introductions
Cats, ferrets, rabbits and deer caused ecological chaos in New Zealand.
Cats, ferrets, rabbits and deer caused ecological chaos in New Zealand.
Ladies of leisure
With the bucks off looking for new groups, Breckland's does take it easy.
With the bucks off looking for new groups, Breckland's does take it easy.
Stoat patrol
Watch out, watch out there's a predator about.
Watch out, watch out there's a predator about.
The right moves
Cute and cuddly perhaps, but there's a lot more to rabbit relations.
Cute and cuddly perhaps, but there's a lot more to rabbit relations.
Species range provided by WWF's Wildfinder.
The Rabbit can be found in a number of locations including: Africa, Australia, Europe, Mediterranean, Russia, United Kingdom, Wales. Find out more about these places and what else lives there.
The following habitats are found across the Rabbit distribution range. Find out more about these environments, what it takes to live there and what else inhabits them.
Discover what these behaviours are and how different plants and animals use them.
Additional data source: Animal Diversity Web
Near Threatened
Population trend: Decreasing
Year assessed: 2008
Classified by: IUCN 3.1
The European rabbit or common rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a species of rabbit native to southwestern Europe (Spain and Portugal) and northwest Africa (Morocco and Algeria). It has been widely introduced elsewhere, often with devastating effects on local biodiversity. However, its decline in its native range (caused by the diseases myxomatosis and rabbit calicivirus, as well as overhunting and habitat loss), has caused the decline of its highly dependent predators, the Iberian lynx and the Spanish Imperial eagle. It is known as an invasive species because it has been introduced to countries on all continents with the exception of Antarctica and sub-Saharan Africa, and caused many problems within the environment and ecosystems, as well. Australia has the most problems with European rabbits, due to the lack of natural predators there.
The European rabbit is well known for digging networks of burrows, called warrens, where it spends most of its time when not feeding. Unlike the related hares (Lepus spp.), rabbits are altricial, the young being born blind and furless, in a fur-lined nest in the warren, and they are totally dependent upon their mother. Much of the modern research into wild rabbit behaviour was carried out in the 1960s by two research centres. One was the naturalist Ronald Lockley, who maintained a number of large enclosures for wild rabbit colonies, with observation facilities, in Orielton, Pembrokeshire. Apart from publishing a number of scientific papers, he popularised his finding in a book The Private Life of the Rabbit, which is credited by Richard Adams as having played a key role in his gaining "a knowledge of rabbits and their ways" that was espoused in the novel Watership Down. The other group was the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, where Mykytowycz and Myers performed numerous studies of the social behaviour of wild rabbits. Since the onset of myxomatosis, and the decline of the significance of the rabbit as an agricultural pest, few large-scale studies have been performed and many aspects of rabbit behaviour are still poorly understood.
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Farmland
Chalk grassland
Heathland
Wildflower meadow
Mediterranean forest
Parkland
Broadleaf forest
Temperate grassland
Tropical dry forest
Tropical grassland
Urban
Helpless young
Dung eater
Hierarchical
Tactile sense
Herbivorous
Adapted to jumping
Nocturnal
Polygynandrous
Social
Territorial
Viviparous