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Rabbits at Risk
People always make jokes about rabbits and their knack for copious procreation, but don't kid yourself: even energetic bunnies cannot produce offspring indefinitely when they are overhunted or their habitats are destroyed. As it turns out, about 30 percent of rabbit species [nine out of 30] are among the most endangered on Earth, according to Andrew Smith, a conservation biologist at Arizona State University in Tempe.
Look at the slide show and acquaint yourself with a few of them... you may never take a bunny for granted again.
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9 Comments
Add Commentit's a friggin rabbit, who cares? if a few of them go extinct, so much the better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou clearly don't understand the concept of trophic cascades, do you? less rabbits, more grass and vegetation, more insects? less predators such as lynxes or coyotes, which in turn keep other prey animals in check?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgreat slide show. poor rabbits! thanks for highlighting this issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe European rabbit may be locally threatened, but it can easily be reintroduced. This is a mere management problem. There is certainly no danger of extinction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you kidding me! Poor rabbits is right! They can be reintroduced-from where? This is just the tip of the iceberg-what will become extinct next? MAN! We'd react then to prevent that. The cycle of life depends on all creatures great and small. The Earth's survival is intertwined for all time by all its creatures!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey guys, what's the matter with you? And I mean it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can hardly believe that people so highly educated as to be SciAm readers can still doubt the fact that the Earth's delicate ecological balance is in jeopady here.
If someone is shameless enough to say 'it's a frigging rabbit, who cares?' sonner or later nature will say 'it's a frigging human, who cares?'
Come on! Wake up! We're still on time.
I'm an Australian. We have quite a few rabbits that are surplus to requirements.... If people are going to get worried/upset over every extinction that is going occur over the next century or so, whatever we do, then they have a problem. I think there may be something to be said for being a bit more selective. Let's face it with at least 9 billion people in prospect by mid century a lot of wild animals have a lot to worry about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"They" have a problem? What on Earth does that mean? The current rate of extinction exceeds by orders of magnitude the rate during any of the mega-extinctions in our planet's history, even the great Permian extinction, during which 95% of living species disappeared. If this isn't a problem for you, what would be?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy death, but that's going to happen too. A couple of comments:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. With the number of people extant & expected there is & will be little room for animals - extinctions will happen.
2. There is no prospect that governments will do enough, soon enough to make any difference. This is true of both climate change and extinctions.
3. The biosphere has recovered from mass extinctions before as you note - the Permian was a longish time ago.
4. I take the long view. Sometime over the next few millenia humans will realise that there are too many of them; unless the Four Horsemen reduce the population by about 90% before then... Interestingly the only people to have attempted to address the real problem, the Chinese, have been vilified for it by those in the west who believe in an inalienable right to breed without limit.