Harefoot: features and habitats

Rabbit-hare refers to a class of mammals, a group of hare-like, a family of hares, a hare genus.

Habitat

The mammal is widespread in the north of Eurasia. The main habitats are tundra, forest and forest-steppe regions, where the hare lives usually apart.

When changing fodder land and deteriorating weather conditions, these animals can move a considerable distance from the places of permanent habitation.

Hare-whit live in a wide geographical range. This is the entire tundra and forest zone of northern Europe (Poland, Scandinavia, Scotland), Russia, Mongolia, Northeast China. He was also brought to South America (Chile, Argentina).

Appearance

Adult rabbit hare reaches a length of 43-61 cm, and its tail is small - 4-7 cm, ears have a length of 7.6-10 cm, it weighs 1.6-4.5 kg. "Northern" rabbits are much larger than their "southern" relatives. Color varies depending on the season. The hare in winter is completely white, and in the summer season the color of the habitat changes - the fur becomes reddish-gray or brown. A change in color in a hare is called molting. Moult they occur twice during the year - from late February to May (spring) and from October to January - in the winter. The duration of the color change process is shorter than the warm spring, than in the cold. On average, the color change in the hare-hare lasts about 80 days.

What does the hare eat

The diet is determined by the habitat and the season of the year. Hare-hare refers to herbivorous animals. In the summer, forest dwellers are happy to feed on green vegetation, and the inhabitants of the tundra eat alpine grasses. Hare eagerly eat cereals, lichens, oats and clover. However, in winter, when all food is mostly under snow, they feed on bark of bushes and various trees.

In autumn and winter, more solid food is included in the diet of whites, they feed at this time bark of trees (willow, aspen, birch), various berries (dog rose, mountain ash, cherry, juniper) and get cedar cones from under the snow. This causes a deficit in the diet of mineral salts, so hares sometimes eat soil, animal bones and pebbles.

Reproduction

The hare has a sex ratio of about 50 to 50. When reaching puberty, the hare begins to multiply. Litter in the female happens 2-3 times, but more often 2 times a year. Time of the first run is February-March, the second - for May-June. The duration of pregnancy in rabbits is from 47 to 54 days. The female gives birth to four, each weighing about 90 g. The size of the mother fully determines the amount of bun in one brood - the larger the female, the more cubs will be born for one litter.

The body of the newborn hare-hare is completely covered with thick fur. Mother-hare fed her children with breast milk on average four weeks. The milk of the female is very fat and nutritious, so she feeds the cubs only once a day. Hare-whitecher reaches sexual maturity in 10 months. Life expectancy of hares in the wild is from 7 to 17 years, but most of them do not live to the age of five for various reasons.

Features of a hare-hare

The relationship between the sexes is such that the males dominate the females. During breeding, sometimes males tend to mate with the same female, which often causes fights between them.

In the afternoon the hare-rabbit most often sleeps, because it is an animal at night.

So it turns out that during severe winter colds, when the amount of food is not enough, these animals use cereals (cereals) and bark of fruit trees as feed, thus causing economic harm to people. Hare-hare is an important object of sport hunting. A man hunts him for skin and meat.

As already mentioned, the hare can survive for almost 17 years, but the duration of its life in most cases is not more than 5 years. The main reasons are different predators (fox, lynx, golden eagle, eagle owl), as well as parasites and insufficient food, especially in winter.