What Is a Rabbit’s Natural Habitat?
The natural habitat of rabbits largely depends on their species, but it includes meadows, prairies, deserts, farmlands, thickets, forests, wetlands and moorlands. The Eastern cottontail, the most common type of rabbit in the United States is often found on grassy fields and along the edges of woodlands and fields.
While Eastern cottontails prefer the dry strips of forests and abandoned fields as their home, desert cottontails have adapted to living in dry shrublands and grasslands. They are found throughout the Plains states. The gray desert rabbit resembles cottontails, but it has larger ears, and it adapted in living in extreme temperatures. Other rabbits thrive in marshes and wetlands. The marsh rabbits found throughout Florida and the Gulf and Atlantic coastal plains from Alabama to Virginia prefer flooded fields and brackish and fresh marshes. The European rabbit, found in southwestern Europe and Africa, stays in grasslands.
Rabbits are found in different places around the world and can survive most types of climates, but they are not native in Antarctica. Cottontail and European rabbits are native in Australia and Eurasia, where hares are more common. Some species of hares, such as the snowshoe hares and jackrabbits, are mistaken for rabbits. While they are similar in appearance, hares are larger, have longer ears and typically have black streaks on their furs.
