Description
Eastern cottontail rabbits are easily identified by their cotton-puff tail. They have brown, black, and tan banded hairs which gives a tweedy look to their fur. Most people don't notice the orange patch on the back of their neck. Cottontails have large ears and large hind feet. All rabbits have large front teeth (incisors) with peg-like teeth located just behind them.
Eating Habits
Summer food consists of green grasses, legumes, and various other herbs or forbs. Many city backyards provide these necessities. During winter periods with little snow rabbits eat grasses and other plants. Crops such as goldenrod, chickweed, clover, grass, alalfa, wheat, rye, beans, lettuce and fruits all provide food for rabbits. Some even resort to decayed animal flesh and insect pupa when other food is lacking.
Rabbits practice coprophagy. They rapidly consume large amounts of green plants during their dawn and sunset feeding times but plant material is hard to digest. Rabbits pass two types of feces (body wastes). One kind is soft and greenish in color. This type is eaten again (sometimes directly from the anus) so the rabbit can absorb all available nutrients from its food by digesting it twice. Vitamin C is absorbed during the second trip through the digestive system. The other kind of feces is the hard, dark colored pellets commonly seen.
Family Life?
Rabbits are very prolific if food is abundant. Courtship behavior include behaviors such as sitting and staring at each other, chasing, and wild leaping. Male rabbits will breed with any female they happen to meet but females only breed with one male.
Rabbits are born 28 days after mating. The female mates again shortly after giving birth. This can result in several families per summer. The female builds a nest by digging a shallow depression in the ground. She lines it with dead grasses and fur. A roof of dead grasses and fur covers the nest to protect it from rain and other weather conditions. These nests may be found in lawns, unmowed meadows, and under bushes.
Rabbits are born completely naked, blind and helpless. They nurse for 3 weeks after birth before going out on their own. Female cottontails nurse their litter just before dawn and just after sunset. They open the roof of the nest and lay over the top of it so the young can reach the mother's nipples for nursing. Then she covers the young up again to protect them from weather and predators.
