Pet Information > ASK Experts > Exotic Pets > Rabbits > Strange rabbit ritual

Strange rabbit ritual

22 9:53:33

Question
This happened around 1978 'esh. I was living in a cabin in the mountains of Oregon.  No real roads, no water, no electricity, no job, no people, nothing but pure peace.  I was a mountain man, living by my wits alone.  The things I saw and did belong in another chapter.  There is just this one thing though.  When I went back there from Tx, a few years ago, what was left of my cabin...well time had taken it's tole.  Behind my cabin the government attached a sign that said, "this is a national historic monument and nothing on it shall be touch or removed".  Funny, it was just me back in the day.  Anyway, I had an old all wheel drive international truck that I got stuck in the middle of know where about a half mile from my cabin.  There was about 3 feet of snow and I couldn't get it out.  So I decided to wait until around 2 am when I knew everything would be frozen.  As I left the cabin to head for the truck, I noticed there was a full moon, and everything was blue.  The snow with was blue. The trees covered in snow, blue. The moon, blue.  No need for a flash light.  It was surreal.  Never seen anything like it since.  The only sign of life was my foot prints and some small animal tracks. Of course snow is a dead give away for anything that's walked across it.  About half way there I noticed more and more rabbit tracks.  They seemed to be coming from all around the forest, from every direction, heading in the same direction.  Finally I see it.  I'm standing in the middle of what could have been 100's of rabbits, all meeting in this one spot.  This circle, this get together of rabbits, was about 40 foot in diameter.  I stood there doing a slow circular turn wondering why so many rabbits came from every part of the forest to meet in this one spot.  The tracks came from every point in the forest as the snow gave it all away.  Maybe it was a battle, but no blood.  Maybe they do it all the time, and the snow gave up their meet and greet.  It seemed like they got together for a meeting but was probably a mating thing, don't know though.  Cant find no data on the subject and no media either, just my story and I didn't see one rabbit that night. I saw this once before when I was hiking in the Columbia river gorge wilderness.  Early one morning 100's of snakes were all converging in one spot.  They slither past me on a mission.  100's of 'em.  So...the rabbits.  What were they up to, so many of them?  Thank you  -Paul

Answer
Dear Paul,

That must have been a very interesting sight!  I'm not sure what species you saw, but it likely was a type of hare.  Hares sometimes congregate at night, and while people usually will tell you they are not social, I can tell you quite the opposite from observing my own Black-tailed Jackrabbits in my yard.  They may not snuggle, but they *do* tend to sit in groups together all night.

Why they do this is anyone's guess.  I doubt it was a mating thing, since you likely would have seen boxing (more likely to be a female rebuffing the advances of an over-eager male than two males fighting) and a lot of racing around.  If they were just sitting, they were probably just being social.  It's also adaptive for them to hang out in groups, since more eyes mean earlier warning of the approach of predators.

I wish I could have seen that!  What a treat.  Hares are about the most beautiful animals on earth.  Magical.

Thanks for sharing.

Dana