Rambunctious Rabbits

On my way to a friend's flat one night, we noticed this cute little rabbit on the grass near Chrome Court. The rabbits on campus, as with most others of the species, are significantly more active at dawn and dusk, explaining why we often see them on the way to the LCR! The UEA rabbits are also rather tame, supposedly because the business of campus has allowed them to get used to people and become much braver. Maybe all the human activity on campus also scares away the rabbit's natural predators, like foxes and stoats. Whatever the reason, these fluffy little creatures always provide a moment of joy when walking around campus, and so I thought I'd explore some interesting facets of bunny biology for this blog!

Rabbits and Stoats

Stoats are rabbits' age-old enemy, a surprisingly vicious predator for their small and slender size, especially when compared to that of the much bulkier bunny, with stoats able to take on prey 5 times their size! They're fast and agile, able to energetically hunt down their prey, and they may even use a surprising technique to do so! Stoats are reputed to dance the rabbits into submission! They've been observed jumping and thrashing around in an athletic motion, possibly intended to hypnotise the rabbits and take the opportunity to attack them, with a bite to the base of the skull. It has been suggested this slightly crazy behaviour could be the result of parasitic infections, rather than an intended attempt to dance the rabbits to death!

Rabbits and Myxomatosis

Myxomatosis is a disease in rabbits caused by the myxoma virus. In its original South American lagomorph host, its a mild disease, but poses lethal to other rabbit and hare species, including our European rabbits. The disease is vectored by fleas which transmit the virus into the blood of their hosts, and causes tumours and lesions on the skin of infected rabbits, eventually leading to death. This lethal disease has killed around 99% of Britain's rabbits, when it first reached the country in the 1950s. This was a crisis of our own making however, with the disease intentionally introduced to France and then spread via fleas across the English Channel to the UK. While rabbits are an invasive species to the UK, they have naturalised and become important ecosystem engineers in many habitats, with their loss having significant effects on ecosystem functioning. Myxomatosis was also introduced intentionally to Australia in an effort to reduce their own invasive rabbit population which was negatively affecting agriculture and native wildlife. Although initially effective, the rabbits there eventually gained immunity to the disease, causing conservationists to turn to Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease instead to attempt to control the population.

In an interesting intertwining of these two rabbit tales, stoats were introduced to New Zealand in their attempt to deal with the invasive rabbit population. This backfired massively, with the non-native stoats now having significant impacts themselves on native wildlife and being implicated in several extinctions. This just demonstrates the difficulty of managing invasive species and the care required to ensure we don't do more harm than good.