Diet changes with forage availability by season. Courtesy National Park Service.
Nature Notes Winter Jackrabbits Lifestyles Elkodaily Com
Jackrabbits are an important food source for many animals.
What do jackrabbits survive in the desert. The arid desert hot dry weather and a scarcity of water and natural resources forced the Bedouin to rely on whatever they had access to in order to survive. Like the Jackrabbit many desert predators such as snakes and Kit Foxes do. Instead antelope jackrabbits live in areas with summer precipitation amounts ranging from 90 mm to 360 mm.
Jackrabbits live in the desert where theyre exposed to extremely hot daytime temperatures. Considering this how do jack rabbits survive in the desert. Just so how does a rabbit survive in the desert.
Youre better off not drinking any water at all than resorting to this. These can include coyotes Red-tailed Hawks Ferruginous Hawks eagles foxes bobcats and humans. The bodies of hares tend to be leaner and they have longers ears and legs as well.
Black-tailed rabbits are the plentiful while being the only jackrabbit found in desert habitats. Diet The diet of the Black-Tailed Jackrabbit consists of cacti sagebrush grasses clover and other plants. Jackrabbits will often rest in the shade during the heat of the day in a shallow depression under grass or bushes.
The jackrabbit is actually not a rabbit but a hare. They prefer grasses and forbs but will eat almost any vegetation that occurs in the area up to about 51 cm 20 in above the ground. The primary function of the jackrabbit in the desert ecosystem is to take the food energy and water from the plants and concentrate them even further in its body.
Everything around them would be used for daily life - ghaf trees would provide shade and shelter while wood and desert plants would be used to make homes. In fact doing so might just kill you faster. There has been a myth circulating for decades that you can drink the water from inside a cactus to survive in the desert.
The water inside of the average cactus is not pure enough to drink and is actually toxic to the human body. They do not live in burrows. What the creosote Bush is in desert plant life the jackrabbit is in desert animal life.
The most remarkable of the jackrabbits desert adaptations is the structure of their large ears. This allows heat to escape into the air around the jackrabbit cooling it off in the process. The Black-Tailed Jackrabbit is located throughout the southwestern United States and parts of Mexico mostly in desert and sagebrush habitats.
The large ears of the jackrabbit are used in cooling radiating heat via an extensive network of blood vessels. When temperatures start to rise jackrabbits can regulate the flow of blood through their ears by dilating their blood vessels. But these animals are able to stay cool by releasing excess heat from their oversized ears.
They can run and hop shortly. Chew and Chew 1970 found 65 of the diet was shrub browse and 30 was herbage. Hares are also precocial meaning they are born with hair and with their eyes open.
Hares live in open areas and rely on running in a zigzag pattern to escape their predators. This species does not prefer an arid climate. The black-tailed jackrabbit Lepus californicus is found throughout the western United States in the desert open plains and foothills.
While rabbits build nests hares do not and their young are born well-furred with wide open eyes. Unlike the black-tailed jackrabbit which survives in less humid conditions the antelope jackrabbit inhabits locations with higher humidity. This becomes the food and water source for many of the desert predators.
They will often forage or rest in groups relying on the eyes and ears of each other for.
