Cottontails and Snowshoes

     Cottontail rabbits and snowshoe hares live in Pennsylvania, as through much of the rest of North America.  They are related to each other and other species of their mutual clan of mammals, but rabbits and hares have branched, each type having characteristics of its own.  Cottontails and snowshoes represent different experiments within their group for survival.
     Both these species are mostly nocturnal and eat a variety of vegetation the year around.  They have long ears for excellent hearing, big eyes on the sides of their heads to see all around themselves at once, stubby tails, and long back legs for hopping fast and far to escape predators, which include golden eagles, horned owls, coyotes, red foxes, lynx and other creatures.   But these rabbit relatives have differences between them as well.
     Cottontails are common in the eastern two-thirds of the United States.  There they are most likely to dwell in thickets along woodland edges, and in hedgerows between fields, overgrown fields and  suburban areas.  Each individual hides by day in a brush pile, under bushes, vines and matted tall grass, or a hole in the ground. 
     Each female cottontail has up to four litters a year, from March to September.  There could be as many as six young in a brood.  Rabbit babies are born blind, naked and helpless, which makes them vulnerable to predators.  Their mothers deliver them in a hidden, protected place and are cautious when approaching the young to nurse them.  Each mother places a blanket of chewed grass and fur pulled from her belly to protect her offspring from the weather and critters who would eat her young.  The youngsters leave their protective nurseries in a few weeks, fully furred and with their eyes open.  They are now ready to feed themselves and detect and escape predators, though some of them are caught and eaten.
     Snowshoe hares live in boreal forests across much of Canada and Alaska and down the Appalachian and Rocky Mountain ranges.  Each one weighs about three pounds, which is larger than the cottontails.  They eat succulent plants in summer, but twigs, buds and bark in winter when that is all that is available to them.
     Snowshoes are brown in summer to blend into their surroundings to be invisible, and white in winter for camouflage.  They are mottled brown and white in spring and autumn when they are shedding old fur for new.  And, as their name implies, they have really large back feet, like snowshoes, for better traveling over snow without sinking into it and getting caught by hungry predators.  Those big feet spread the weight of the hares, as snowshoes do.              
     Female hares have two or three litters of young a year, from April to August, with three to four babies in a brood.  Females don't make nurseries for their young, but deposit them in a slight depression in the fallen leaf cover of the forest floor.  The young are born with brown fur, which camouflages them on the leaves, and their eyes open.  Within a few days they leave their "cradles" to feed and fend for themselves.
     Cottontail rabbits and snowshoe hares represent how a family of animals unknowingly experiments with different aids to survival.  Some work, some don't.  But both their ways seem to work for rabbits, so far.