The desert cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii) is the common rabbit of Big Bend. The black-tailed jackrabbit weighs between four and eight pounds. The female doe is larger than the male buck. Their total length is between 18 and 26 inches. The tail has a black stripe that runs along the top onto the rump (hence the name) and is 2' to 4 1/2' long. The jackrabbit is actually not a rabbit, but a hare. Hares live in open areas and rely on running in a zigzag pattern to escape their predators. Hares are also precocial, meaning they are born with hair and with their eyes open.
- Black Tailed Jackrabbit Habitat
- Jack Rabbit Storage Virginia Beach
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- Running Warehouse
YouTube Video
I am the Black-tailed Jackrabbit and I love to hop around the desert.You can tell me apart from my cousins by my gigantic ears with black tips and my black tail of course.By my name you would think I was a rabbit, when in fact I am a hare. Some people consider me a pest because there are so many of us.We usually live between 1 and 5 years.
WHERE DO I LIVE?
You can find me wandering the Sonoran Desert of western Arizona all the way down through northern Mexico.I love the wide open spaces of the desert because it gives me plenty of room to run and allows me to keep an eye on my predators.
WHAT DO I EAT?
A fun fact about me is that I can run up 40 mph!!!I can go as fast as a car driving through your neighborhood!I can also jump up to 5 feet in the air.
Black-tailed jackrabbit http://thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/mammals/Lagomorpha/Leporidae/Lepus/Lepus-californicus.html- Look here to find some fun and ineresting facts about the black-tailedjackrabbit.
http://thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/mammals/Lagomorpha/Leporidae/Lepus/Lepus-californicus.html- Facts about the black-tailed jackrabbit.
http://voices.yahoo.com/animal-facts-black-tailed-jackrabbit-4176433.html- Facts about the black-tailed jackrabbit
doubledutchrabbitry.comBlack Tailed Jack Rabbit -Picture of sitting black-tailed jackrabbit
dinets.travel.ruBaby black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus), Coral Gables, Florida- -Picture of baby black-tailed jackrabbit
Black-tailed Jackrabbit at Full Gallop www.flickr.com - Picture of running black-tailed jackrabbit.
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Jackrabbits (Lepus spp.) have long ears, long hind legs, are larger than rabbits, and live in western and central North America. They are hares rather than rabbits, bearing fully furred young with open eyes and not constructing burrows for homes. They eat plants, including cacti, each jackrabbit eating 1/2 to 1 pound of plant material daily. They can have four litters of two to eight young per year.
Jackrabbits
Jackrabbits are nocturnal, feeding at night and retreating to shallow depressions they dig for themselves, called forms, in the shelter of shrubs or other vegetation. They occupy a wide variety of habitats, from arid desert scrub, sagebrush desert, prairies, northern plains and even alpine-tundra areas. They are able to survive by eating a wide variety of plant materials, including grasses, sedges, different kinds of leafy annual and perennial plants, shrubs and succulents like cacti and yucca. They also eat crops such as alfalfa, barley and winter wheat.
Antelope Jackrabbit
The antelope jackrabbit (Lepus alleni) inhabits desert scrub and grassland in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Well-suited for their environment, they have reflective yellow-brown fur to reduce their heat load -- large ears that act as heat radiators -- and don't need to drink free water, getting all the moisture they need from their food. During the dry season, they eat mostly mesquite leaves (Prosopis spp.) and cacti, but when rains allow other plants to grow, they eat grass. Antelope jackrabbits can run fast to avoid predators, and flash a white rump patch while running to confuse predators. Pronghorn antelopes (Antilocapra americana) also have this behavior, which gave this jackrabbit its common name.
Black-Tailed Jackrabbit
The black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus) is the most common jackrabbit in the western United States. You can tell it from the other kinds of jackrabbits by its black-topped tail. It weighs 3 to 7 pounds, and is grayish-brown with black-tipped ears. Fast runners, they reach 35 mph at top speed and can jump in 20-foot bounds. They inhabit short- and long-grass regions in the Midwest, sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) scrub in the Great Basin and mesquite-prickly pear areas in the Sonoran Desert. In Kansas, black-tailed jackrabbits eat prickly pear (Opuntia spp.) fruits from early autumn until freezing weather. Seeds pass through the intestinal tract into the feces, and jackrabbits are thought responsible for spread of prickly pears in prairie rangeland. They also eat the pads during times of drought.
White-Tailed Jackrabbit
The white-tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus townsendii) is native to the north central and northwestern states and into Canada. It is the largest jackrabbit, weighing from 6 to 10 pounds. It turns from brownish-gray to white in winter in the parts of its range where snowfall occurs. White-tailed jackrabbits can reach 40 mph running on all fours, and can also hop like a kangaroo. They live mostly in grassland habitats, or mixed shrub-grasslands, avoiding dense timber areas. They prefer more densely vegetated areas for cover but graze in more open areas. In short-grass prairie of Colorado, white-tailed jackrabbits were found to also eat fruits of prickly pear cactus, but in addition ate fruits of a pincushion cactus (Mammillaria vivipara), perhaps helping this cactus in seed dispersal as well.
References (3)
- Wild Mammals of North America: Biology, Management and Conservation; George A. Feldhamer, Bruce C. Thompson, Joseph A. Chapman
About the Author
Cathryn Chaney has worked as a gardening writer since 2002. Her horticultural experience working in the nursery industry informs her garden articles, especially those dealing with arid landscaping and drought-tolerant gardening. Chaney also writes poetry, which has appears in 'Woman's World' magazine and elsewhere. Chaney graduated from the University of Arizona in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in English.
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