If you’ve been to a Chinese restaurant lately, or keep a Chinese calendar handy, you might have noticed that 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit. Hungry for more information, you might have delved deeper and consulted a widely recognized reference, the paper placemat, and learned that people born in a rabbit year are affectionate, talented and articulate.
Maybe these traits bear some resemblance to rabbits as you find them in China, but the rabbit we have here—the eastern cottontail—comes equipped with a completely different set of attributes.
Our Sylvilagus floridanus is, for one, prolific. Females breed again almost immediately after giving birth, and a single doe can produce as many as 25 young over the course of spring, summer and fall.
Perhaps related to their high reproductive rates is the fact that cottontails also are rather indiscriminate. Put another way, Momma Cottontail doesn’t always look very closely before she leaps into motherhood.
I remember talking to a woman a few years ago who’d called to report a batch of bunnies had been born on her front sidewalk. Naked, blind and helpless, the four babies were lying on a small patch of undercoat fur Mrs. Cottontail had pulled from her own body and thoughtfully placed on the concrete before she made her deposit and left.
Oh, and it was raining.
Lucky for the species, such lapses in judgment usually can be traced to a doe’s inexperience at parenting, and usually are offset by another litter in a few weeks.
Another word that can be used to describe cottontails is misunderstood. Many people tend to think of rabbits as rodents. The animals, after all, have incisors that grow continuously, just like your pet mice, hamsters and gerbils. However, rabbits belong to a separate order, Lagomorpha, a group that also includes hares and pikas.
One difference between rodents and lagomorphs lies in their dentition, or pattern of teeth. Whereas rodents have one pair of incisors on the upper jaw, lagomorphs actually have two. The larger, continuously growing incisors are in front; smaller “peg” teeth lie directly behind them.
These teeth, along with the molars, grind the stems, leaves and other plant materials that make up the bulk of the cottontails’ diet. But there’s one other component of their nutritional intake that gives rise to yet another rabbit-appropriate adjective: coprophagic.
That’s right, bunnies—cute, fluffy, hippity-hoppy creatures that they are—eat their own poop. But before we get all judgmental and apply our human values to this seemingly appalling practice, let’s remember that coprophagy is quite common among herbivores that consume large amounts of cellulose.
Cellulose, the main component in the cell walls of most plants, is insoluble, so it’s tough on digestive systems. When such a meal is consumed, large amounts cellulose—and therefore, nutrients—pass through the gut virtually untouched. However, through an interesting maneuver called reverse peristalsis, the mass moves back up through the colon to the cecum, a small sac-like structure between the colon and small intestine.
There, millions of microbes go to work, breaking down the cellulose into useful components like simple sugars, starches, and amino acids. But, since little to no nutrient absorption occurs in the colon, the rich materials (known as cecotropes) are passed, then eaten again.
The second time’s the charm, and the small intestine can easily absorb the now-readily available nutrients. Evidence of this second pass can be found wherever rabbits rest or take shelter, in the form of what we might delicately call rabbit “raisins.”
Prolific, indiscriminate, misunderstood and poop-eating, that’s a look bunnies, in brief. Happy 2011, the Year of the Rabbit!
Pam Otto is the manager of nature programs and interpretive services for the St. Charles Park District. She can be reached at potto@stcparks.org or 630-513-4346.