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European hare (Lepus europaeus)

Source of the photo
http://www.onlinephotographers.org/hu/foto/224/
Author of the description
Gerlinger Eszter Judit

Scientific classification:

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Lagomorpha

Family: Leporidae

Tribe: Lepus

Species: Lepus Europaeus

 

Occurence

Almost current in the whole world. He spread on all of the world quasi. Native in Europe, West Siberia, Minor Asia and in North Africa, but it was resettled into Ireland, into the eastern part of North America, Barbados, Argentina, onto the area of Chile, Australia and New Zealand as well. The people wanted to introduce the european hare in England on many islands, with a slight success. Probably this is linked to it presumably, that the hare is sensitive to the moistness, and rather rely on a protected hiding places than the alpine rabbit. The largest density is in the low lying, half-intensively farmed, and calcareous clay soils, habitat reaches, since he prefers the opener leafy forests, the agricultural and grassy areas. He shares his area with the alpine rabbit in some places. In Hungary vulgar, can be hunted.

 

Features

Much bigger than the cony, his body length 40-75 cm, his weight moves between 2, 5-5 kgs. He jumps huge ones with his long feet. The special fuzz of the sole hair makes it possible in order for the hare to change a direction quickly on slippery ground. With the help of his bottom strong feet the 70 kilometres/a velocity is able to reach. His tail is 7-11 cm long, black on the top. His ear relatively bigger than rabbit’s, his head slenderer, more provided. His primary is the characteristic game colour, the mix of the brown and yellow.

 

Lifestyle

Typical fleeing animal, what long ears, big eyes, long legs and a refined sense of smell is also indicative. When danger comes lurks in a pit, his ear allows. At sunset, moves slowly while he grazes, and presses against the land flatly. He lives solitarily. Only the breeding season can be seen in pairs or small groups. Only the breeding season can be seen in pairs or small groups. They showed with nominations that he does lesser or greater wanderings. In 1928, a mass migrate observed in Ukraine, which apparently led to the unusually heavy snowfall. Most animals died during the trek.

A lie is not prepared for themselves, the hares scratche little pits only.

The hare takes plants exclusively, his food list though most wide. The hare primarily feed at night, they rest in the undergrowth at daytime. It, that let the adults individuals be allowed to cover their energy needs, daily 0,6-1kg a plant has to be consumed. Stomach content examinations established it on his row, that primarily they feed in the natural vegetations, they it more grown plants grow in in winter time. During the tests, 80 plant species found in the stomach of rabbits. The most popular plants were grasses and meadows (pl. blood-wort, shepherd’s-purse, daisy, dandelion and testicle ones). The young hares stays in sowing in spring and eats it. Visits the clover and the alfalfa later, after harvest the corn-, the potato- and retires onto carrot lands, attends the young autumn sowings and cabbage gardens then. In winter, if the snow is big withdraws onto the neighbourhood of the gardens and the threshing floors and may make huge harms with chewing him in tree nurseries, tree nurseries in the orchards at this time. They can cause a big damage especially with the chewing of the black locust. The cecum exposing 1/3 to the volume of the intestinal canal receives a big role in the demolition of the tall food with a fibre content.

 

Enemies

His natural enemies the birds of prey with a big stature, foxes, wolves, the stray dogs and the mustelidae, between them the polecat and the beech marten. Mostly patient or sick and the young, inexperienced animals are carried off. The full-grown rabbits run so exceptionally quickly in galloping zigzag order to be able to leave almost all of their pursuers behind far. The profit of them seeing in a full circle is bought at this time just as well since their pursuer’s motion can be kept on a manner such with an eye. It serves the defence against the predatory mammals his behaviorial pattern, that runs back on the own trace of procession onto the lay-by on a section, occupies his lie with a several metre long side jump then. The predators following the smell trace get into a dead end, so the rabbit watching from the side have more chances to escape.

 

Reproduction

The hare's mating time lasts from March to the end of April. The time of the pregnancy is 41 days, the females give birth in the surface hollowed little pit annually twice or three times a year, at first one-two, secondly two-five kids, the one year old or the older ones give birth to rather less. They are different from the cony in that they see after being born already, and they can run away. They skulk on their cache, they do not smell yet at this time and they wait for their mother in order to come to suckle. Their fur coat protects them against getting cold, however they are very sensitive from the moistness. The mother separates them already though with the passing of a week. They not only differ from the cony in this look, but in their courtship habits to: the hare gather on places defined in spring. The males chase the females. We may see 4-8 rabbits can be seen as wild chase after racing each other, through the field where there are a lot of them. When the rabbits chasing each other neither see, nor hear, so in the spring they are often victims of the traffic.

 

Role in ecosysten, public health and economy

The hare is one of the most important small deer. Another one hundred thousand copies fall the victim of the traffic. The hunter statistics prove that the substances are able to counterbalance all this on a long distance however, in the totality of the tendency growing rather, than showing decrease. They presuppose that the modern agriculture makes the lands an adverse habitat overwhelmingly for the rabbits. It means the end of many hare that the harvest begins at once on the waist of the summer, and they come short of some days without food on enormous areas. Immediately after the harvest the lands are plough up. The complicated social order of the rabbits collapses totally at this time. The animals are obliged to be crowded on remained areas, where the infection risk grows and the enteritis occurring epidemically sweeps across the young animals on the end of summer. The few survivors, a bar himself become resistance fighter onto the illness, carries the pathogen of what means constant danger to the successors. They try to protect the rabbits substance from the infection with the unloading of baits implying medicine so. The rabbits in case of especially wet weather inclined onto the illness.

The hare was able to immigrate in that age only onto the Middle and Western Europe's cultivated lands, when the big deforestations opened this new habitat for him. Primarily the smallholder farming offered with the many boundaries, the narrow parcels, with the constant change of the field produces favourable habitat like that, that the hare was able to develop significantly thicker substance here, than his original homeland. Finds fresh vegetable on the cultivated areas in a whole year for himself, even in winter, when the single part of the land is ploughed up. The food abundance can not eliminate the parasites and illnesses troubles caused by, depending on the weather, they still pose a threat It is possible that the decline in the number of hares in the last few years were strongly influenced by the weather, although the continued favorable weather is slowly taking up the stock itself, which is not much cause for optimism. Perhaps the contamination of habitats are now reached such an extent that even the unassuming, as well as less sensitive species of permanently damaged. It may be that the rabbit will be an important indicator of quality environment. The increasingly smaller covers mean much more, than merely it, that the game will be less.

 

Roil in the soil

The habitat of hares largely tied to the ground. Otherwise the rabbits burrowing underground digs flights, merely scratches the surface of the soil in a sheltered little trough.