Rabbits Could Be The Next Climate Change Casualty

Climate change is already having detrimental effects on ecology and wildlife around the world, and these problems are likely to get worse in the years ahead. But there remains much that is unknown. While many species, like the arctic polar bear, will predictably be worse off as their natural habitat and food sources are depleted, other species will undoubtedly benefit, and for still others, fortunes could go either way. One case in point is rabbits.

There are known to be more than 30 different species of rabbit, including 305 different breeds, spread across the world. Rabbits are one of the most recently domesticated animals, with some scholars tracing their domestication back to French monasteries in the 600s. Around that time, Pope Gregory the Great ruled that rabbit meat could be consumed during lent, leading to increased production in monasteries.

They are considered useful in many contexts and pests in others. For example, humans eat rabbit, use their fur for clothing (including in some forms of wool), rabbit’s feet are popular good luck charms, and therapeutic proteins are extracted from rabbits for medical uses. Rabbits also share some hereditary characteristics with humans including having some diseases in common, which makes them popular for use as test animals in scientific experiments.

At the same time, rabbits can be a severe annoyance and can even pose a threat to the environment. Most of us have at some point experienced rabbits invading our home gardens, eating home-grown vegetables or gnawing away at the pedals of flowers. They can pose such a nuisance that they threaten entire species of plants in their surroundings.

Rabbits can be particularly problematic on islands. For example, on the Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco, European rabbits pose a threat to local vegetation. One study found that the Canary Islands could potentially see a “remarkable increase” in the rabbit population as a result of climate change, especially in more mountainous regions, exacerbating the local ecology problems there.

According to the study, rabbits on Tenerife (one of the Canary islands) tend to thrive in the drier, more temperate zones. As temperatures increase, higher elevation alpine areas will see less snow and become more congenial to rabbits. On the other hand, higher precipitation is correlated with lower rabbit populations in the area, so changes in drought or storm patterns could prove important.

Other studies find that precipitation benefits rabbits by increasing the amount of foliage available for them to eat. For example, a study of Baja California rabbits over 10,000 years describes a “Baja Bunny Boom” effect, whereby El Nino weather patterns generate greater rainfall relative to other time periods, and higher bunny populations as a result.

Precipitation patterns will likely vary worldwide as a result of climate change. Just as some regions experience more precipitation from increased extreme weather events, others will experience longer dry spells due to droughts.

At higher temperatures, rabbit production becomes more challenging, which means higher costs for farmers in the form of fans, air conditioning units or other cooling strategies. Reduced fertility among rabbits is one consequence of hotter temperatures (something apparently also true in humans). Litters tend to have fewer bunnies, birth weights are lower, and there are higher rates of mortality among the young.

If rabbit production becomes more expensive, this could have implications for medical research, and also in countries like Egypt, where rabbit meat has become an important part of the food supply and local economy.

Rabbits struggle with higher temperatures, in part, due to having few sweat glands. Nevertheless, some species, notably jackrabbits, thrive in dry desert climates. Others, such as the white snow bunnies whose fur changes color in the warmer months may find themselves at increased risk to predators as snowfall patterns change.

One study noted that at about 32 degrees CelsiusCEL
rabbits stop jumping, and at 34 degrees they can be observed noticeably panting. Some predict rabbit populations will gradually move in a poleward direction, as areas where populations exist now become more tropical.

Parasites present in dirt that rabbits ingest may also increase at higher temperatures. This could reduce rabbit populations, depending on their immune system response, and may also have implications for other livestock and even humans, given small children also get sick playing in dirt.

This is yet another area where the impacts of climate change, both for humans and wildlife, are likely to be diverse and multifaceted. Rabbit populations in some areas, like the Canary Islands, could well increase even while those cute white snow bunnies become harder and harder to find. On balance, the effects look harmful. Some estimates suggests more than two-thirds of rabbit species could be threatened by climate change.

Due to the many human uses of rabbits, as well as the threat they pose to various forms of vegetation and by extension ecological systems, there will be many knock-on effects—some good, some bad—as rabbits cope with the ongoing challenges associated with climate change.