European rabbit

Summary

The European rabbit is a nocturnal animal that communicates through their olfactory senses and lives in a burrow, which is defended during the breeding season. Due to the rabbit’s rapid ability to reproduce, ensuring reproductive success is highly important to the rabbit. The European rabbit is monogamous in small groups or areas in a low density population and are polygynous in large groups or highly dense populations. Males take primary care of the young since the female mainly cares about providing resources for herself so she will be able to breed again. Special parts of the burrow are designated for breeding and females have been known to kill their own young after breeding. This is one reason why the males tend to take care of the young instead of the female.

Males tend to defend the breeding burrows by leaving highly odorous pellet droppings to keep predators or other rabbits at bay. Rabbit’s ability to reside in an area with an abundance of resources leads to their evolutionary success. Daly noted that “microevolutionary changes are much more likely to be a function of fluctuations in population size and differential productivity between groups.” Therefore, how a animal’s social organization is structured leads to evolutionary changes within the animal, including European rabbits (Daly, 1981).

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	Photo Courtesy of http://www.invasivespecies.net/database/species/ecology.asp?si=18&fr=1&sts=
	Summary The European rabbit is a nocturnal animal that communicates through their olfactory senses and lives in a burrow, which is defended during the breeding season. Due to the rabbit’s rapid ability to reproduce, ensuring reproductive success is highly important to the rabbit. The European rabbit is monogamous in small groups or areas in a low density population and are polygynous in large groups or highly dense populations. Males take primary care of the young since the female mainly cares about providing resources for herself so she will be able to breed again. Special parts of the burrow are designated for breeding and females have been known to kill their own young after breeding. This is one reason why the males tend to take care of the young instead of the female. Males tend to defend the breeding burrows by leaving highly odorous pellet droppings to keep predators or other rabbits at bay. Rabbit’s ability to reside in an area with an abundance of resources leads to their evolutionary success. Daly noted that “microevolutionary changes are much more likely to be a function of fluctuations in population size and differential productivity between groups.” Therefore, how a animal’s social organization is structured leads to evolutionary changes within the animal, including European rabbits (Daly, 1981).
	This site was created by Natalie Dennis to fulfill the requirements of Animal Behavior, Biology 323, at Davidson College in the spring of 2006.