The Capybara
Few people, on seeing a capybara for the first time, would take it to be a rodent. It looks much more like a wild pig, for it has a very heavily built body, which almost touches the ground as it waddles along, short, stiff, bristly hair, and great hoof-like feet. Indeed, it is sometimes called the water-hog. Yet we only have to look at its front teeth to see that it really is a rodent after all.
The capybara is a native of South America, and is generally found in the damp, marshy ground near the banks of the larger rivers. It is a good swimmer, and always makes for the water when alarmed. It is a good diver, too, and can easily remain below the surface for seven or eight minutes without requiring to breathe, so that if it can once plunge into the river it is safe from almost any foe. When fully grown, the capybara is about four feet long, and weighs nearly one hundred pounds. In fact, it is the largest of all the rodent animals. In color it is reddish brown above, and brownish yellow beneath, and it is further remarkable for having no tail at all.
Hares and Rabbits
The hares and rabbits, of which our account is taken from "The Life of Mammals," by Ernest Ingersoll, form a compact family of some sixty species, scattered in all divisions of the globe except Australasia and Madagascar; but only one species occurs in South America, and the family is most numerous in northerly regions, where these animals form an important food resource for man and beast. All are much alike in the long, high-haunched hind legs, which give great leaping and dodging power; tall, erectile ears; divided upper lip; short scut; and grizzled gray-brown coat, with various specific markings of white and black. The only exceptional one is the "hispid" hare of Northeastern India, which has small eyes, bristly short ears, short hind legs, and much the manner of a rabbit.
The term rabbit has wholly replaced "hare" in America, because the common small hare of the eastern United States, quickly seen by the first English settlers, looked to them more like the rabbit they had known at home than like their bigger hare; and they ignored the difference in habits as they did so many other facts in their careless naming of the animals of the New World after those of Europe. It must always be remembered that the first Pilgrims, Puritans, and southern "adventurers" were mainly from cities, and knew little of rural things, to which ignorance, by the way, they owed most of their early misfortunes in the colonies.
The true rabbit, or cony, differs from its relatives by its small size (average weight two and a half to three pounds), short ears and hind legs; but more in its habits, for its young are born naked, blind, and helpless, and it is comparatively slow-footed. Hence it has been compelled to become a burrower for the safety of both itself and its babies, and, as is usual with animals become burrowers, has acquired the habit of gathering in communities, whose crowded diggings, or warrens, are labyrinths of subterranean runways. Even this, however, would hardly suffice to preserve this timid and nearly defenceless race were not several litters of five to eight young (leverets) produced by each pair annually to make good the loss from enemies and disease. The original European wild rabbit is grayish brown, becoming foxy on the neck, but this rabbit has been domesticated since ancient times, and alterations of coloring as well as of form have been produced. Ten or more distinct breeds are recognized by fanciers, some of which, as the lop-eared, the great Belgian, and the Angora, are far away from the original type.
Their amazing fecundity has caused rabbits to multiply into an almost uncontrollable pest since they were unwisely introduced into Australia and New Zealand, where the scarcity of beasts of prey allowed them to increase without bounds. In a few years, therefore, the whole country was overrun by millions, which threatened to devour not only all the crops but every bit of wild herbage; even in Europe, when for any reason their subjection is neglected, they do great damage to gardens, orchards, and plantations of young trees.
At present further use is being made of the rabbits by "packing" their edible flesh in various forms as an article of preserved food, which is finding a wide market; and probably the pest will be abated in course of time by natural processes.
Returning to the hares, not much need be said as to particular species. All dwell either in open grassy country or else among rocks and bushes. They do not flock, nor make any sort of shelter, but each inhabits a certain small district, where it makes a smooth resting-place called its form. To this it will return day after day for a long time unless frightened; and in such a form the young are born and are left concealed, when still in the suckling age, under a cover of leaves and vines, or even fur plucked by the mother from her own loose coat and felted into a sort of blanket. They seek no better shelter than this in winter, except that some, as our common little cottontail, will creep into the mouth of an old skunk's or woodchuck's hole or within a hollow stump, to seek protection from the "cauld blast." The "jacks" of the Plains are so well furred that even the soles of their feet are warm mats of hair; and they are the only small animals able to survive outside of burrows the intense winter cold and gales of those bleak uplands. This hardihood is due primarily, of course, to the fact that hares are able to find nutritious forage all through the winter, and so keep up their bodily heat.