Hi everyone it's Liam here from a shot of wildlife
and in this video I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about the European rabbits.
Despite their familiarity and apparent commonness around the UK countryside
European rabbits are actually a non-native species that was first brought to the country
almost 2 000 years ago by the romans. It isn't clear if this is when rabbits colonised into the
wild but they were definitely here in significant numbers by the end of the 12th century.
European rabbits are the ancestors of house rabbits which can be found in a
wide variety of colours but naturally they're a grey-brown colour with light
of affair underneath and a white underside to their tail. They can grow to weigh up to
two and a half kilos and to measure more than 40 centimeters from head to tail.
Rabbits are fames for their long ears and European rabbits are no exception with adults ears growing
to around seven centimeters in length, which is about the same length as their entire heads.
Rabbits usually live in colonies with multiple females which are known as does
living with a dominant male which is known as a buck,
alongside several subordinate males which often live on the outskirts of the territory.
These colonies can be anywhere where the ground is soft enough for the rabbits to dig their
underground burrows, usually around farmlands, deciduous woodlands, and coastal sand dunes
and occasionally amongst human developments too. Each burrow within a colony often connects
underground to others and the entire network is known as a warren. The rabbits spend a lot of
their time in these warrens where they store food, sleep and give birth to their young.
The main reason they emerge is to find food and this includes leaves,
shoots, grass, bark and bulbs which the rabbits chew using their ever growing front incisors.
With most species this is the end of the story but not with rabbits. As their food is quite
hard to digest they cannot extract all the nutrients from it the first time around so
they actually eat their own faeces to digest it a second time. This process is known as coprophagy.
There is a famous saying "to breed like rabbits"
and this is no misnomer, European rabbits have the ability to breed very quickly
and in good conditions their populations can explode over a short period of time
Pregnancy lasts 28 days, after which the does give birth to around five
hairless and blind young which are known as kits. This normally happens underground in a nest made
of hay and lined with fur. The kits grow fast on their mother's milk and after just three weeks
they are mobile and able to leave the warren on their own in search of food.
This early independence means the mother can become pregnant again and raise another litter
in quick succession. In good years they can have as many as five litters in just 12 months.
Over the last couple of decades rabbit populations in the UK have declined by around 60 percent.
This is in part been caused by the man-made myxomatosis virus but they have also suffered
from other diseases, a reduction in suitable habitats and increasing numbers of predators.
Despite this decline there are currently an estimated 37 million rabbits in the wild here.
If they manage to avoid predation and disease rabbits can live for up to nine years.
Well that's everything you need to know about rabbits and that's the end of this video.
If you did enjoy it then check out all these other two british wildlife videos
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