Random Wild Rabbit Facts

Anyone that knows me knows how much I dislike wild rabbits - sure they're cute & pretty much harmless - but I've had an ongoing battle with wild rabbits now for a few years as they seem to wander into my yard every year, nesting in my garden, destroying some of my plants along the way.

However, being that this is "Rabbit Week", I thought I would post a few random facts about wild rabbits taken from the "Pleasebekind.com" website:

• Rabbits are not rodents but belong to their own order called lagomorphs. The evolutionary split between rabbits and other living mammals probably occurred about thirty million years ago.
• There are twelve species of rabbits in the United States with the eastern cottontail being the most widely distributed.
• Famous for their reproductive abilities, cottontails breed from February through September. Gestation is about 28 days. Three or four litters of four or five young known as kittens are born each year. Young are born helpless in a shallow depression lined with grass and mother’s fur, but they grow rapidly and are weaned when less than half the size of the adult.
• Many mortality factors affect rabbit populations. Weather is a major factor in nest mortality as ground nests are susceptible to flooding in heavy rains.

Ok, so the reproduction of wild rabbits troubles me. If there are 8-10 wild rabbits in my neighbor's yard, 2 doors down and another 4-6 rabbits in my next door neighbor's yard (on the other side) that's 12-16 wild rabbits. If only 3 of these 12-16 are females & they all have 4 litters of let's say 4 "kittens" each year for two years that's 96 more rabbits in 2 years! If out of these 48, 12 females all have 4 litters of 4 "kittens" each year for two years that's another 384 rabbits. Now I know, many of these rabbits won't survive long enough to breed, but still the fact that they breed so fast & so often is a bit troubling!