[gentle music] - Announcer: The Wisconsin School of the Air presents Robert S. Ellarson, extension specialist in wildlife management in The Wonderful World of Nature.

This series of programs designed for in-school viewing by children in grades 5 through 9 is televised each Monday afternoon at 2 o'clock by University of Wisconsin Television.

Now, Robert Ellarson and The Wonderful World of Nature.

- Hello, boys and girls.

Today, we're going to be talking about a group of animals that I'm sure all of you are familiar with, our native Wisconsin rabbits and hares.

Last week, you may recall we talked about some of the adaptations of different kinds of animals, adaptations which help these animals live in a particular habitat or environment.

Today, we're going to be talking about our native Wisconsin rabbits and hares.

These animals are very similar to each other, and here in Wisconsin, we have three different kinds of rabbits and hares.

They're animals which I'm sure all of you are familiar with.

They're found throughout the state of Wisconsin, and as a matter of fact, rabbits are one of my favorite animals because I've spent quite a number of years studying these rabbits here at the University.

Rabbits belong to a group of animals known as the Lagomorphs.

They are quite similar to rodents, and yet they are different.

The last time I talked about rabbits and hares as being different from rodents to a group of school children, I had quite a lot of these children objecting because they felt that rabbits and hares really were rodents.

And I think possibly that I can show you how rabbits and hares differ from rodents today.

Rabbits and hares, as you all know, have long ears and rather short tails, and long, large hind legs.

But more important, as far as the scientists are concerned, rabbits have four teeth, four upper incisors, and if you come in close here, we'll take a look at the difference between the skull of a true rodent and the skull of a rabbit.

On this in my hand here, I have the skull of a muskrat, and the muskrat is a true rodent.

And if we look closely, we can see that in the upper jaw, there are two very large front teeth or incisors, but just two.

Now, if we take a look at the jaw or at the skull of a rabbit, we can see that there actually are four upper incisors.

Notice that there are two very small peg-like incisors here in addition to the two large cutting teeth or incisors in the upper jaw.

And this is the principal difference between the true rodents, such as the muskrat, and the Lagomorphs or the hares and rabbits.

Now, in Wisconsin, as I said before, we have three different kinds of rabbits and hares.

One rabbit, the cottontail rabbit, and two hares, the snowshoe hare or snowshoe rabbit and the prairie hare or jackrabbit.

And I imagine some of you are wondering what the difference between a rabbit and a hare is, and there is a very real difference.

The principal difference between these two types of animals is in the condition of the young when they are born.

Now, the rabbits when they produce their young, make a nest, and the mother rabbit will dig a hole in the ground, a kind of a pear-shaped hole such as I have drawn here, and this hole will be lined with fur, which the mother rabbit plucks from her breast.

And in this fur-lined nest, the young are born.

The young rabbits are naked and blind and helpless when they are first born, and remain in this nest for a period of a week to 10 days before they finally come out.

On the other hand, the young of the hares are born quite fully developed.

They are haired and their eyes are open, and they are usually born right on the surface of the ground, very frequently beneath the fallen tree trunk or some other sheltered space, and the young rabbits and hares are simply dropped on the ground with no nest being made for them.

So this is the difference between the rabbits and the hares.

Now, here in Wisconsin, the three rabbits and hares that we have live in different habitats or environments.

The cottontail rabbit, which is the first rabbit that we shall talk about, is the common rabbit in Wisconsin.

It is found throughout our state, and if we take a look at a range map of the cottontail rabbit in Wisconsin, we find that the rabbit is found throughout the state of Wisconsin.

However, it is most abundant in the southern half of our state, and there are certainly a great many rabbits found in Wisconsin.

It is probably one of the most numerous of the wild animals in our state.

It is an animal of the brushlands, primarily around the edges of fields and the edges of woods, but it is also very tolerant of human beings.

And frequently, we find rabbits right inside cities.

I know that I can look from my office window and see rabbit tracks in the snow outside of my window, and look right across the yard out into one of the busiest streets in the city of Madison.

So they do come right in and live in close association with human beings.

Now, the other animal that we're going to be talking about is the snowshoe hare.

This animal is an animal of the north lands.

It is an animal that is not usually found in association with human beings.

It is an animal of the forests and swamps.

And if we look at the range map of the snowshoe hare in Wisconsin, we find that the animal is confined almost entirely to the northern one-third of our state.

In all of the United States and in North America, the range of the snowshoe rabbit just barely gets into the northern part of the state.

Mostly, the range of the snowshoe hare is north of the United States and Canada.

It is an animal of the north lands.

The next animal that we are going to consider is the white-tailed jackrabbit or prairie hare.

And this picture of the prairie hare shows that it is an animal with very long legs.

And it lives on the open grasslands.

The range of the snowshoe hare or of the jackrabbit in Wisconsin is confined largely to the western and southern part of our state.

Now originally, there were very, very few jackrabbits found in Wisconsin.

But they are an animal that is increasing its range in our state.

In 1944, the range of the jackrabbit only extended about this far in Wisconsin.

And since that time, the jackrabbit has spread throughout this region in through here.

And the reason for this, of course, is that the jackrabbit is extending its range into the open farmlands of our state.

As the farmlands are cleared and cultivated, more range is opened up for the jackrabbit, and this allows it to spread throughout the state.

Now, let us take a look at some of the skins of these animals so that we can get a little better idea of the comparative size and shape of the various rabbits and hares.

This first animal that we will take a look at is the cottontail rabbit.

Some of you might wonder about the flatness of these skins.

Well, again, these are study skins, and they are purposely made flat so that they don't take up so much space.

This is the common rabbit in Wisconsin.

The cottontail rabbit.

It is an animal of the brushlands.

And it is rather fleet of foot, but probably not nearly as fast as the jackrabbit.

It is an animal that weighs about between two and three pounds.

The next rabbit we want to consider is the snowshoe hare.

This animal is actually, its body is just about the same size as the cottontail rabbit.

But notice, and it weighs about the same.

It's about, weighs between two and three pounds.

Notice, however, the extremely long hind feet as compared to the hind feet of the cottontail rabbit.

Notice also that the ears are somewhat longer in the snowshoe hare than they are in the cottontail.

That's another character of hares.

Usually, their ears are somewhat longer than rabbits.

Now, the third animal is the largest of the three, and this is the jackrabbit.

This animal weighs over twice as much as the cottontail and snowshoe.

This particular jackrabbit weighed seven and a half pounds.

So it is a very good-sized animal.

Notice that it has, it too has very long hind feet, which gives it great speed.

Notice also that it has very long ears.

Now, these three animals, these rabbits and hares are some of nature's most defenseless creatures.

Because they are prey to practically all of the predatory animals that are found in our state.

Coyotes, foxes, owls, hawks, and even man is a predator because all of these animals are game animals.

And many of them are shot during the hunting seasons.

In fact, the cottontail rabbit is one of the most important game animals in Wisconsin.

There are over a million of them shot every year by hunters.

Now, what is there about these animals which makes them so successful and allows them to live in this hostile world that they live in?

The cottontail rabbit is rather a fast rabbit when he is first started from his form, and he escapes his enemies by a short burst of speed.

Another way that he is successful is that he knows very well the landscape in which he lives.

His home range is very small, only a couple of acres in extent.

But he knows every nook and cranny of it and every safe hiding place.

So that when we frighten the rabbit, he disappears from view almost immediately and he is very difficult to find again because he has found another good hiding place.

The snowshoe hare has some very special adaptations whcih enable him to live in his particular habitat.

He too is rather fleet of foot and elusive, but he is living in a habitat that is covered with snow for a good part of the winter.

Deep, soft snow.

And he has a special adaptation as his name implies.

He is called the snowshoe rabbit, and if we look at his hind feet, we can see that these great, enormous hind feet with the large fur soles on the feet enable him to get around on the surface of the soft snow without sinking in and floundering about.

Notice how soft and large these hind feet are, regular snowshoes.

The name snowshoe hare is a very good name for this particular animal.

Now, another adaptation is that the snowshoe hare has is that he changes color in the winter time.

And here is a snowshoe hare in his winter coat.

Notice that it is completely white except for two little dark tips on his ears.

This rabbit changes color in the fall.

His coat turns white, and then in the spring of the year, he loses this white coat and again grows his brown coat.

So this is another adaptation which enables him to live in this snowy climate, and of course, being white, it is much more difficult for his enemies to see him.

Now the third animal, the jackrabbit, lives in the wide-open spaces, and his main adaptation for escaping his enemies in this habitat is his great speed.

These animals are tremendously fast on foot.

They can outrun any dog, and they bound off, they scarcely seem to be exerting themselves at all.

Yet each leap will carry them from 15 to 20 feet.

And sometimes, as we see them bounding across the prairie, we see them making what we sometimes call a spy hop.

As the animal runs across the prairie, he makes a series of long bounds like this, and suddenly we'll see him bound up in the air with a great high leap.

And this is called a spy hop because when the animal is up at the top of this leap, we can see him turn his head and look around to see where his pursuers are.

This enables him to get up above the grass and to look about and see that everything is clear.

So even the jackrabbit living on the prairies has these special adaptations.

Now, one thing that rabbits seldom have to worry about is food because rabbits are strict vegetarians and can eat a wide variety of foods.

During the summertime, their food, all of these rabbits and hares, their food consists mostly of green, leafy plants.

In the wintertime, however, they are what we call browsing animals.

In other words, they are animals which live on woody plants, on the stems, the bark, and the twigs of woody plants.

I have some specimens here which I gathered just the other day to show you what some of the feeding of these animals looks like.

Here is a piece of sumac, which is one of the favorite foods of the cottontail rabbit, and we can see here that the rabbit that fed on this piece of sumac was rather fussy.

For he was just simply biting the buds off of the twig.

Notice here and here and back here, he has just nipped a bud off.

Here, we see a bud that hasn't been touched, that wasn't touched by the rabbit.

The feeding habits of these animals very frequently gets them into difficulty.

Here is another twig of sumac, and you can see that the bark has been completely eaten off of this twig, and of course this stem would be killed by this type of feeding.

Rabbits very frequently damage plants and young orchards.

Here, for example, is a young crab apple tree that was repeatedly browsed by rabbits.

In fact, this little tree was browsed in five successive years.

This was the first time back here, this little dead stub marks the first browsing.

The tree then grew up here and it was browsed again the following winter.

Then it grew up to this point and was browsed here.

Last year, it grew up to here, and was browsed here.

And last summer, this was the new growth that came up to this point, and you can see that this too has been nipped off by rabbits.

You can always tell when rabbits bite off a twig because they do such a neat, clean job of it.

Notice that it is cut off at an angle and just as slick and clean as it could be cut off with a knife.

Thorns seldom bother rabbits, and this piece of rose that I have here shows some of the, a rabbit browsing on a rose bush.

Notice that all of these little short twigs have been clipped off by rabbits.

And rabbits sometimes eat things which we don't ordinarily think of as being very palatable.

Look here at this little branch of pine.

This is a scotch pine, and notice how the rabbits have nibbled all of the needles off of these twigs.

In fact, cut this twig right off.

So rabbits can be very destructive in their feeding habits, particularly when they become very numerous.

Now I hope today, boys and girls, that you have seen how very closely related animals can be adapted to different environments.

And we have seen how our native Wisconsin rabbits and hares have been adapted to their particular habitat.

And that's all for today.

So long.

[gentle music] - Announcer: Each Monday afternoon at 2 o'clock, the Wisconsin School of the Air presents Robert S. Ellarson, University of Wisconsin Extension specialist in wildlife management in The Wonderful World of Nature.

This series of programs is designed for in-school viewing by children in grades 5 through 9.

Next Monday at 2:00, our television classroom will again view The Wonderful World of Nature, and we invite you to join us then.