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Breeds of Rabbits Common to America

Rabbits are among the more common and widely distributed mammals in North America. They belong to the lagomorph order, which also includes hares and pikas. Hares are often confused with rabbits but generally are bigger, leaner and boast larger ears and hind legs; the jackrabbits of western America, despite their common name, are actually hares. Often hugely abundant, true rabbits are important browsers and grazers and provide sustenance for a broad range of carnivorous animals.

Eastern Cottontail
- Eastern cottontail rabbits are ubiquitous in eastern North America and also inhabit portions of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest. Rusty brown in coloration, the eastern cottontail can be roughly distinguished from close relatives which overlap its range, like the New England and Appalachian cottontails, by the white sash that frequently marks its head between the ears; those cottontails often sport a black one. Immensely prolific and adaptable, eastern cottontails are critically important prey items for a host of predators, including great horned owls, red-tailed hawks, bobcats, red foxes, coyotes and weasels.
Brush Rabbit
- Brush rabbits are small, dark cottontails found along the West Coast from the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon south to Baja California. The underside of a brush rabbit's tail is grayish, not white. As the name suggests, brush rabbits frequent the tangled vegetation of stream corridors, chaparral hollows and shrub thickets. One subspecies, the riparian brush rabbit of California, is endangered.
Rabbits of Wetlands
- The swamp rabbit of the southeastern U.S. is the largest of America's true rabbits, weighing up to 6 lbs. It usually has deep brown fur with rufous patches around its eyes, with the white underside to its tail characteristic of cottontails. These strong swimmers favor bottomland swamps and riparian woods and are common in canebrakes, dense stands of giant cane and switch cane, North American species of bamboo, that flank rivers and swamps of the Atlantic-Gulf Coastal Plain. The marsh rabbit is a smaller species found farther east on the coastal plain, including down the Florida peninsula, which frequents open marshes and swamps.
Interior West Rabbits
- A number of rabbit species inhabit the deserts, steppe and mountains of western America. Among them is the smallest of all rabbits and hares, the pygmy rabbit, closely associated with the sagebrush steppe of the Great Basin and Columbia Plateau. These diminutive gray rabbits may weigh 1 lb. or less. Larger species in the region are the desert cottontail, which inhabit Southwestern drylands but also the shortgrass and mixed-grass prairies of the Great Plains. The mountain cottontail ranges from sagebrush steppe to montane conifer forests.

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