When Is A Rabbit Not A Rabbit? When It Is A Hare! So you've found a baby bunny! But is it a cottontail or a jackrabbit? Not knowing can be deadly to the bunny. Cottontails have a natural camouflage coat of tan, brown, and sometime gray tones evenly distributed. Desert cottontails, Arizona's most common species, have a rusty patch at the nape of the neck and up the back of the skull. Their heads are narrow viewed from the front, and egg-shaped from the side. Jacks have much darker coats with black "marbling" and often facial streaks. They have a snub nose, dome-shaped head, tan rings around the eyes, and a ring of white around the muzzle. Blacktailed are the most common of the jackrabbits. They have black tips on the back of their ears and, when you flip the tail down, it has a black stripe that ends at the base of the spine. Whitetailed, Antelope, and the rare Whitesided are the three subspecies of jackrabbit.
Antelope Jackrabbits are the largest of all species of hare When estimating its age:  Jackrabbits
are born with their eyes open, fully furred and able to run (precocial).
Cottontails are born naked, blind, helpless (altricial).The
average weight for a newborn jack is 80-100 grams. (This is the
average weight of a 3-4 week old cottontail). Cottontails weigh about 30 grams at birth. Jackrabbit
mothers DO NOT DIG BURROWS. They separate their young, hiding
them under dense vegetation. Cottontails venture
out of a burrow or hidden nest and are on their own at around
5 weeks.
|
Jackrabbits
go through a dramatic physical change, becoming lean, muscular,
angular; and those ears! They stand an average of half the length
of the body. When lying down, the ears often reach the knees.
|
|
copyright Regina Whitman
1998-2008 All rights reserved
Desert Cry Wildlife, Inc. 501(c)3 charity