does any one keep mourning doves as pets

[deerman]

Quote:
Guess you have never seen a day old cottontail...cover with hair yep everyone is born with hair(very thin fur) but still hair. Rabbit burrow hares don't , same with the cottontail, which don't burrow.


You so sure a cottontail is a rabbit , show me one pic of a naked cottontail. Yes most people call them cottontail rabbit, but that doesn't make them rabbits

 

[Pops2]

here is the link to a newborn cottontail, looks pretty naked.
http://natureinquiries.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/cottontail-nest-3b.jpg?w=448&h=307

 

[deerman]

Quote:
look like the thin hair....if that was a rabbit it would not have any hair...note the color ,thats not the skin.

 

[Pops2]

first ALL mammals are born w/ baby fuzz. that IS the skin. but just to hopefully help you understand better here is a comparison photo of new born hares & rabbits.
http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuse...4E4E95B257B82?method=preview&lang=EN&id=13934

 

[deerman]

They have been call rabbit so long, lot of wrongt info out there about them,

Hares dont burrow , nest in indentation in the ground, which eastern cottontail do, rabbit dig burrow , hares use other like ground hogs hole, which is what the eastern cottontail do.

rabbit i raised had no fuzz..cottontails have thin fur at birth...rabbit babies are bare skin for days.

Let put it this way the eastern cottontail behave more like a hair than a rabbits

Also eastern cottontail can breed with hares , but not rabbits....thinks that make you say "huh"

 

[Pops2]

dude you need to go read up, start with Mammals of the World: a Taxonic and Geographic Reference from Johns Hopkins University Press.

short and sweet ALL rabbits & hares are related. all are in the family leporidae. each of the three groups we are talking about are in a different genus. all hares (including snowshoe, european & jack rabbits) are genus Lepus. all cottontails (all the native rabbits of north & south america) are order sylvilagus. all european rabbits (including ALL domestic rabbits) are order oryctolagus. NONE of them can interbreed. all attempts have resulted in spontaneous abortion of 95% of all fetuses. of the fetuses that do not abort 99% are stillborn. ALL of the 1% that are live born die within 3 days.

all hares are born FULLY furred with OPEN eyes and can regulate their own body temperature. both european and cottontail rabbits are born NAKED (yes that piddling amount of fuzz is still considered naked and that piddling amount of fuzz also shows up on newborn european WILD rabbits), BLIND and dependant on their parents body heat to maintain their body temperature. so regardless of your fixation on behavior (yes cottontails USUALLY do not dig burrows and when they do they abandon them when they abandon the litter) physiology makes them both rabbits, although only marginally closer in relation to each other than to hares. an additional aspect of behavior is that where conditions prohibit warrening or digging burrows, european rabbits will use thicket & brush pile nests (forms) just like a cottontail or hare.

BUT, don't take my word for it. go to homesteading today and ask Pat Lamar. he is the president of ARBA and has forgotten more about rabbit & hare biology than you & i put together ever knew.

 

[laughingdog]

ok ok, ill take the blame for opening this whole can of worms, but was talking about the common taken over imports from europe ad spain mainly, and not the slightly similar enough endangered natives, and that the natives and others here before and aside from white un able to diferenciate recods, show much differance in what most now consider native.. for instance, ive seen many healthy hybrids of wild "common native cottontails", and the european domestic breeds that were able to be gotten at by these "native wild ones". seen known natives that been kept for years with european pet rabbits and never produce offspring, im still curious and slightly confused.

 

[Pops2]

laughing dog
it is NOT possible for native cottontails & european rabbits to produce a hybrid. it's been tried thousands of times on purpose and failed EVERY time. totally different genus. hybrids can only happen within the same genus. outside the genus the relationship is too far and won't work. for example fox & dog are both canids but not canines and so they can't reproduce. EVERY attempt has resulted in failure to impregnate or spontaneous abortion of the fetuses not even a single stillbirth on record.
what does happen is people cross breed between two different breeds of domestic (european) rabbit and it throws a (or all) wild colored rabbits and the owners speculate the neighborhood cottontail did it when in reality it was the black bunny in the cage w/ the tan bunny. in fact i almost bought some mutts like this at the wal mart parking lot. solid black dwarf over a solid tan meat, the babies all came out looking like wild european rabbits brown & gray fur w/ black tips to the hairs and white underside & tail. if i'd had a running pen for them i'd have bought them, let the greyhound chase them w/ a basket muzzle on, and then planted them to stock a few hunting areas.

on the plus side you were spot on about the red foxes not being native.

 

[laughingdog]

i ment they must have been imported feral european rabbits that crossed with pets, as seen were wild ones were getting in pen, or put in on purpose for eating etc, with an ALONE female, living out in country, and im not talking soccer mom suburbs. lol i was also told many other hybrids were impossible right up to when was getting out of school and a science professor was screaming back at me that lions and tigers couldnt cross... no, nope, no way, no how, just because it was impossible. so i brought in a documentary on it that was running id taped if i new how to do similar on the computer i would, but easy enough to look it up. unless our released or escaped pet rabbits are as far reaching and happen to have taken over way out in country as well as inner cities (my town now i see alot of stray bunnies though too), by chance surviving and breeding to look just like the tiny by comparision cottontails. incidently its been now proven that dolphins and some whales both naturally and otherwise can produce even viable offspring, when up until recent was thought they were to far apart and just differant to produce offspring. also some dogs and the artic fox project (they were bred tamer to be better handlable etc as well as other things), were found that the cast offs left loose as pets would interbreed with dogs and other canids. course "National Geographic" has lied before its now being found, so could all be fibbs. alot of these mixes were tried in lab studies and never worked but in the field.. Oops!

 

[Pops2]

the russian tame fox project was done entirely with red fox and none of them have successfully crossbred with dogs. the arctic fox was crossed with the red fox to produce the blues raised by fur farms. if there was a legitimate dogXfox it would be worth a TON of money to which ever research company/group/university bid the most.
lions & tigers are in the same genus, Felis. you must be even older than me because lionXtiger hybrids have existed in captivity since at least the 1960s.
dolphins have been crossed w/ pilot whales which are just big dolphins not outside the family. still can't cross them to gray whales for example.

yes i'd say what you had in that case was feral europeans, san juan rabbits are feral europeans from san juan island in washington state. this is the rabbit most commonly used in beagle training & feild trial pens (although i know a few guys that run dwarf crosses). the average guy (even the guys that own the pens) are not aware they are european rabbits but thinks they are just some kind of cottontail.
as for size, depending on the subspecies, wild cottontails can be 6# while wild european run from 2-6#. not a difference in size except between wild rabbits & domestic ones in general.