Most people associate big cities with rats, pigeons, and cockroaches, and they wouldn’t be all that wrong. But in parts of Europe (and Chicago, weirdly, but that’s a different story), some urban areas have a pretty sizable population of wild rabbits. Can you even imagine? Rabbits. Just, like, running around in public parks like squirrels. Be still my cold, city-dwelling heart.
A team of researchers led by University of Franfurt’s Madelin Ziege performed the world’s cutest census recently when they compared the burrows they found in Frankfurt’s parks with several found in suburban and rural areas. They discovered that rabbits structure their homes not all that differently than humans do—in rural areas, burrows are sprawling, complex, and spread out, whereas “urban burrows” are smaller, simpler, and spaced out a little more evenly from one another, almost like tiny bunny apartments. Rabbits are also more likely to live in smaller groups in the city, which the researchers theorize is they don’t need as many other rabbit bodies to keep them safe from the winter. Also, if my own experience living in New York is any indication, maybe they’re just not interested in hanging out with their neighbors all that much.
But don’t feel bad for the city rabbits and their tiny, isolated rabbit homes. Rabbit populations in Europe are actually dwindling considerably, and they only tend to live in big groups when their resources are scarce. In German cities, however, they can live in relative comfort without worrying too much about where their food is coming from. Also, smaller warrens means that if your rabbit kin is cursed with the gift of foresight, he won’t have to convince so many of his bretheren to believe in his terrifying visions. Seriously, Watership Down would have ended a lot differently if those bunnies had taken Fiver seriously from the get go.
(via Discover, image via TalyaPhoto)
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