The Secret Life of Rabbits

Cold weather warriors with a thing for coprophagia

You think you know rabbits: symbols of fertility and abundance. Shorthand for springtime and new life. But wait’ll you hear how they do winter.

These famous little love machines are hardcore survivors. Our native Eastern Cottontail rabbits do not hibernate or hop south for the winter, they stay right here in Philadelphia’s parks, cemeteries, vacant lots – anywhere there’s scrubby brush for cover.

And they do it with an extraordinary toolkit that will probably change how you look at rabbits forever.

Hot in Hare

Like many other local mammals, rabbits prepare for winter by getting fatter and fuzzier. Cottontails have an added trick up their sleeve: “brown fat”, a special sort of fatty tissue that’s supercharged to generate heat without shivering. It’s the same cold-weather technology used by hibernating animals — but rabbits deploy it while staying fully awake and active, like a built-in heating pad around their internal organs.

Eastern cottontails can further fine-tune their inner thermostat through the many tiny blood vessels in their ears, which are extremely responsive to temperature. As conditions shift, they restrict blood flow as needed to curb heat loss, adapting with almost scientific precision.

So rabbits are quite comfortable when the landscape is buried under ice and snow. But what on earth are they eating?

The answer is so much weirder than you think.

Second Helpings

We all know rabbits eat lettuce, clover, and other green stuff. But if they have to, they can subsist on bark, twigs, and woody plant material — the kind of bulk that would pass straight through many other animals without offering much nourishment.

But rabbits, like cows, have a very specialized digestive system that can break down fibrous matter to extract the nutrients. Instead of multiple stomach chambers, bunnies process their food twice by eating their own poop. Not all of it; the “cocoa puffs” at the bottom of rabbit cages are the last stage, only for emergency rations.

Cottontails excrete another kind of poop, though, that’s biologically designed for daily consumption. They make it in a special pouch in their digestive system, where roughage goes through its first breakdown, creating proteins, vitamins, minerals, even probiotics.

This nutrient-packed slurry comes out as soft pellets that the rabbit usually eats every night. Covered in protective mucus, they travel safely through the stomach’s digestive acids to become fully absorbed later on in the tract.

While this adaptation certainly helps rabbits sustain themselves in a frozen landscape, it’s not just for winter. This is how rabbits work, year-round. Perfectly natural and yet somehow new information. Seems like this should be way more common knowledge, no? I can’t be the only one rethinking the Easter Bunny.

Born to Breed

As for the rabbit’s legendary fertility, it has a dark side. Consider the frantic pace they multiply. Females give birth 3 to 7 times per year; gestation takes less than a month. A typical litter is 3 – 8 offspring, who are sexually mature in only 2 to 3 months. For those counting at home that’s… a lot.

This is essentially the rabbit’s best survival tactic of all: volume! Cottontails are small and defenseless creatures with the odds stacked against them. Predators, disease, weather, vehicles, and human interference all take their toll.

Less than a quarter of all young survive their first year. Only 30% of adults make it through winter. The species relies on what ecologists call “mathematical resilience:” enduring through sheer numbers. Many, many bunnies die, so that their genes can live on.

Food Chain Champs

Rabbits don’t reproduce just for themselves. Their productivity supports an entire network of urban wildlife. The hawk you spot on a light pole, the fox trotting down a rail line, the owl hooting in a nearby tree. They wouldn’t all be here, if it weren’t for the rabbits.

Cottontails are an ecological indicator of health, and also a key linchpin. They turn plants into movement, energy, and opportunity for other species. All this, and they’re adorable too.

Our Eastern Cottontail is a wintertime marvel, a portrait of pluck and stamina. Is it a coincidence that their breeding season synchs up with our Valentine’s Day? Sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate the timing.

Here’s to pairing off and the promise of what comes next! February gives us all a chance to feel a little more alive in the dead of winter.

🐰 FUN FACTS: Bunny Biology

1. The Eastern cottontail gets its name from its bright white, cottonball-like tail, which flashes as it bobs and weaves through underbrush, confusing predators.
2. Rabbits can run 18 – 20 mph and are capable, if reluctant, swimmers. When threatened, they may freeze in place for up to 15 minutes to avoid detection.
3. Rabbits usually live their entire lives within a small area, from 1 to 15 acres (they roam farther in poorer habitats).
4. With eyes on either side of their head, rabbits have a field of vision almost 360 degrees: they can see behind, beside, and above them all at once. They can also see ultraviolet light.
5. Rabbits can see about six times better than humans in dim light. Like cats, their eyes glow in the dark due to a special reflective layer that concentrates ambient light.
6. Rabbits’ excellent hearing covers an extraordinarily wide range from low vibrations to high ultrasonic frequencies. They can detect sounds about 1.5 miles away.
7. A rabbit’s ears each have 16 distinct muscles that rotate independently to isolate sounds and pinpoint where they’re coming from.
8. A rabbit’s sense of smell is about 20 times better than ours; they twitch their nose up to 120 times per minute to analyze scents in the air.
9. A rabbit’s winter coat is made up of multiple layers, with matching furry “boots” that protect and insulate their feet.
10. Like humans, rabbits sleep about 8 hours a day — but not all at once. They nap in short bursts, staying semi-alert even while resting.

🐇 FUN FACTS: Bunny Behavior

1. Eastern cottontails are crepuscular, meaning they’re most active in the dim light of dawn and dusk – after the owls and foxes have retired, before the hawks and snakes come out.
2. Despite Bugs Bunny’s enthusiasm for carrots, they’re not actually part of a wild rabbit’s diet. Cottontails are surface foragers, not diggers.
3. As prey animals, cottontails generally don’t vocalize. They will thump loudly with their hind feet to alert other rabbits when danger is near.
4. In snow, rabbit tracks show two large hind feet landing ahead of two smaller front feet, forming a stretched “Y” or arrow shape that’s easy to spot once you know what to look for.
5. During courtship, rabbits perform high-energy leaps and twists, sometimes jumping 10–15 feet in the air. Both sexes leap, but only males spray urine to mark potential mates and show interest.
6. Unlike European rabbits, Eastern cottontails don’t dig warrens. They use surface shelter like brush piles, dense shrubs, and abandoned burrows instead.
7. Rabbits chew 120 – 150 times per minute when eating. Their teeth never stop growing, so they must constantly to wear them down to avoid dangerous overgrowth.

🙌 FUN FACTS: Bunny Beliefs

1. Male rabbits are called bucks, females are does, and babies are kits. A group of rabbits can be called a colony, a herd, a nest, or — unofficially — a fluffle.
2. Rabbits are the third most popular companion animal in the U.S. after dogs and cats — but pet rabbits descend from European rabbits, not Eastern cottontails.
3. Rabbits are not hares. Pennsylvania’s only native hare is the Snowshoe Hare, found in northern forests like the Poconos — not in Philadelphia.
4. In many Native American cultures, the rabbit is a clever sometimes mischievous figure.
5. The belief that a rabbit’s foot is lucky goes back to the ancient Celts who associated their speed with good fortune.
6. According to Appalachian folklore, when rabbits are seen actively foraging on a winter day, that’s a sign heavy snow is coming.
7. Rabbits have been a fixture in popular culture, literature, and advertising for thousands of years.
8. Bad Bunny got his name from a childhood photograph where he looked grumpy while dressed in a bunny costume he did not want to wear.

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Thoughts? Comments? Please leave them below. If you enjoyed this Local wildlife feature, check out last month’s spotlight on snow fleas.