Black bunnies - melanistic black rabbits in the wildEach night last week BBC1's early evening magazine programme The One Show featured a segment filmed at Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. During the report on Wednesday's programme we were shown an orphaned wild baby rabbit that just happened to be jet-black in colour. The reporter, Mike Dilger, claimed that such melanistic rabbits were "one in a million".
Well, for the past 10 years or so I have been seeing wild black rabbits in and around Didcot, Oxfordshire, where I live. At first I thought it was the same individual I was seeing over and over, but then I started seeing them in other locations locally. I have on occasion seen tw
o or three at the same time, and have sighted both adults and babies with this condition. I estimate that in total I have seen between 20 and 30 such individuals over the last 10 years.So, if such black bunnies are really "one in a million", does that mean they are all concentrated into this one small area of Oxfordshire? Somehow I very much doubt it. I would like to throw this question open to the readers of the CFZ bloggo and ask for black rabbit sightings from around the country, just to get a more realistic idea of how widespread this phenomenon is.
Are these black rabbits becoming more commonplace? Does anyone remember seeing such rabbits in the wild 20, 30 or more years ago?
I attach two photographs I took of a black rabbit in a field in East Hagbourne, near Didcot, on 20 July 2010.
Gavin
The Handbook of British Mammals describes melanic Rabbits as "not uncommon" and "more frequent in the absence of ground predators (e.g. on islands or in large enclosures)".
ReplyDeleteI have encountered melanic Rabbits while undertaking contracted fieldwork in the Uists (Outer Hebrides) and the Isle of Man, as well as frequently in the home counties (including, like Gavin, two animals at a time) and suspect that many larger colonies hold at least one example.
I would not be surprised if a rigorous study found melanic Rabbits to occur in a ratio of around 1:100 - certainly not the telly person's 1:1000000! (Misinformation like that is not uncommon on television wildlife programmes; the old adage about not believing all that you read in the newspapers should be adapted to apply to other media!)
I think others have also mooted a possible increase in melanics, but I don't know of any hard research. Counts by amateurs at a series of colonies at dawn or dusk could be worthwhile.