A Rabbit's Tall Ears Can Pinpoint Sounds Up to 2 Miles Away
The world can be a dangerous place for a wild rabbit. They are prey animals, which means they must always be on high alert for hungry predators like hawks, coyotes, or foxes. Luckily, those big, adorable bunny ears aren't just for show! A rabbit's ears act like a finely tuned radar, able to pick up sounds from as far as 2 miles away. If you could hear as well as a rabbit, you could stand at the bottom of a skyscraper and hear your friend shouting to you from the top.
In order to pinpoint what direction the sounds are coming from, rabbits can rotate their ears up to 270 degrees in either direction. That way they can figure out whether the predator they just heard creeping through the forest was in front of them, off to the side, or right behind them.
A rabbit's ears also help regulate its body temperature. On a hot day, the blood vessels in a rabbit's ears will expand, allowing the air outside to quickly cool the rabbit's blood as it passes up and down the rabbit's ears.
Bunny Hops Are Physics in Action
You probably guessed that rabbits use their powerful hind legs to leap high into the air, or launch themselves from a dead stop into a speedy sprint. But there's more to it than muscle. Every time a rabbit jumps it makes an instinctual, lightning fast calculation about how high it needs to jump, how far it needs to jump, and how fast it needs to be moving for the jump to succeed. In physics, we would say that a rabbit's jump is the result of a clever manipulation of acceleration and force.
Picture a rabbit that needs to jump over a fence. It needs to leap high into the air to clear the fence, but it only needs to move forward a short distance to make it to the other side. In this case, the rabbit needs to convert almost all of its forward momentum into upward force.
The rabbit takes a short run towards the fence, then uses its powerful hind legs to launch itself straight up in the air. Its hind legs push down against the ground, exerting a powerful downward force that generates an equal and opposite force which pushes up against the rabbit. This upward force launches the rabbit high up into the air. As it crosses over the fence, gravity pulls the rabbit back towards the ground. The rabbit rises and falls in what's known in physics as a parabolic arc.
While it's in the air, the rabbit is able to pinpoint a landing spot and adjust the angle of its body's descent so that it will land softly on its short front legs. In order to achieve a graceful landing, the rabbit wants to convert its downward momentum into forward acceleration. As its short legs touch the ground, the rabbit pulls its front legs in towards its body, generating friction between its paws and the ground. The friction converts the rabbits downward momentum into forward acceleration. The rabbit lands softly on the other side of the fence and shoots forward into the grass. When a rabbit needs to jump across a wider distance, it will accelerate to a higher speed and adjust the angle of its jump so that it leaps further but not as high.
How impressive is this instinctual understanding of physics? Well, consider that humans didn't learn about any of this until Sir Isaac Newton published his fundamental laws of physics in 1687. Maybe we would have figured it out sooner if we'd spent more time studying rabbits!
Rabbits Can See in Every Direction at Once
When you're a hungry predator's favorite dinner, it helps to have eyes in the back of your head. No, rabbits don't have an extra pair of eyes. They don't need them! Unlike our eyes, which are set forward in our skulls, a rabbit's eyes are located on the sides of its head and are shaped so that a rabbit has nearly perfect 360 degree vision. Aside from a small blind spot directly in front of its nose, a rabbit can see whats in front of it, behind it, and off to it's side all at once! Additionally, rabbits are far sighted so they can spot predators in the distance before they get too close.
Wild Rabbits Don't Eat Carrots
Seventy five years ago, Warner Brothers Animation introduced the wise-cracking, carrot-chomping cartoon character Bugs Bunny. Ever since, generations of children raised on Looney Tunes have grown up believing that carrots are a rabbit's favorite food. But it's not true! Carrots are a root vegetable, meaning that in the wild a rabbit would have to waste a lot of energy digging the carrot out of the ground before it could chow down. Carrots are also too high in sugar to be a healthy main course for rabbits. In the wild, rabbits are more likely to eat easily accessible low-lying plants like clover, grass, berries, some kinds of flowers, or tree bark in the winter. If you have a pet rabbit, it's okay to feed them carrots as a treat in small amounts, but it's better to feed your rabbit a diet of leafy greens like spinach, watercress, fresh herbs, or dandelion leaves.
Bunnies Have a Special Hop to Show They're Happy!
We've saved the most adorable rabbit fact for last. Did you know that rabbits have a special hop they do to show that they are happy and excited? It's called a binky and it's the cutest thing you will ever see! Animal researchers discovered the behavior while observing rabbits playing together. They saw rabbits leap up into the air, twist their bodies and kick their feet in a playful expression of joy. In the wild, rabbits will exhibit this behavior when they recognize or are playing with a sibling. Pet rabbits will often binky when they recognize their owner, know that they're about to get fed, or as a way to signal that they are ready to play!
Thanks for learning about rabbits with us! We hope you're as amazed by all the incredible things rabbits can do as we are. Can't get enough rabbit content in your life?
Spring into spring with your own incredible Jumping Bunny. Learn about physics, mechanics, and robotics as you build a bunny robot that can really jump!
