Peter was acquired August 15, 2002 .  Abandoned as a baby, he was hand-raised in someone’s home. He was dropped off at a wildlife rehabilitation centre where he was deemed un-releasable due to his lack of fear of people and other animals. Cottontails need to be afraid of almost everything in order to stand any chance of survival, as they are so readily predated by so many other animals.

Cottontail Rabbit ()

Dining and Dwelling

The eastern cottontail’s diet varies by season and distribution. The majority of their diet consists of grasses, vegetation, roots, seeds, twigs and bark.

They prefer cover which varies by season and by region. Good rabbit habitat consists of natural growing vegetation and overgrown fields, however the cottontail rabbit is one of the few rabbits that do not live in burrows.

Life and Death

A female cottontail rabbit is able to breed and have young in their first year of life. Females may produce 35 young in seven litters annually. Gestation averages 30 days and the young are born blind and helpless, but are on their own in two weeks, leaving the female cottontail ready to breed and have more young.

Most cottontail rabbits do not survive longer than two years because they are prey to many animals, such as, owls, hawks, weasels, martens, lynx, bobcat, domestic cats and dogs, foxes, and wolves. Cottontail rabbits are the bottom of the food chain, considered one of nature’s snacks

That's Amazing

-If you were to start with a pair of cottontails and they had young, and their young had young and everyone survived, after five years you would end up with 350,000 rabbits.

-Rabbits produce two types of poo, the first is soft and the second is hard. They will ingest the soft feces and leave the hard pellets on the ground.