# Talk:European rabbit

This areticel is internally contradictoruy about who first brought rabbits to Britain.  One subsection claims by Romans on or after 43 AD, while another claims by the Normans on or after 1066 AD.  (I have read elsewhere a claim that Angles and/or Saxons brought them circa 600-800 AD.) Acwilson9 (talk) 23:39, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

European rabbits are established in southern vancouver island 2605:8D80:326:7517:E4BD:D4DA:6645:C00D (talk) 01:11, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Current academic consensus seems to be that only O. c. algirus and O. c. cuniculus are viable subspecies. Should the other entries be taken out of the table (including the domesticated subspecies)? Reconrabbit 14:54, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I think so, yes. However, they and their deprecation can be discussed in the article body. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:12, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
So have they been synonymised with algirus or cuniculus? Mariomassone (talk) 19:49, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
The geographic reference points given are described in less detail by Ferrand, implying that the full details are given by Fonseca in a 2006 thesis work. It is written that the populations present throughout the Mediterranean "remain to be studied but may have a similar origin", indicating that they belong to O. c. cuniculus as does the population introduced to Zembra, while the only populations explicitly synonymized with algirus are those in Madeira, the Azores and the Canaries. I believe the read here is that the subspecies named by MSW except for huxleyi are synonymized with cuniculus. I do have to add more to the fossil record, as Lopez-Martinez has more to say about extinct subspecies, though he also describes algirus and huxleyi separately (though this source and presumably Fonseca describes them as synonymous). Reconrabbit 20:34, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm going to leave the subspecies info as is for now until I can get my hands on a copy of Handbook of the Mammals of the World Vol 6. I also emailed Nuno Ferrand for clarification but I have had very poor luck getting responses from academics. Reconrabbit 19:45, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
HMW 2016 lists out the 6 subspecies annoyingly, but the current consensus appears to be only 2 subspecies. Reconrabbit 19:29, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't know why I couldn't figure this out earlier, the IUCN page says "Two  subspecies are recognized: O. c. cuniculus and O. c. algirus. The latter  is only present in the Iberian Peninsula and some islands, while the  former occurs in most of the species’ introduced range.". ([1]) Reconrabbit 00:18, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Anyone have access to this paper here? Could be (the start of) an interesting topic to cover. Mariomassone (talk) 07:01, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

I have access through my university. Some interesting parts:
In the case of Eastern cottontails and autochthonous Lagomorphs species (L. europaeus and O. cuniculus), body size should be an important factor in winning direct aggressive interactions (Glazier and Eckert 2002). Thus there should be a dominance rank from hares, to European rabbits, to Eastern cottontails that can regulate the access to feeding patches.
Populations of European hares and European rabbits are dramatically limited in Italy by habitat, diseases, and most important, by overhunting (mainly in the case of hares). On the contrary, hunting does not seem to be a limiting factor for cottontails that show a great dispersal ability expanding their range very fast. This attitude of Eastern cottontails is supported by the higher reproductive performance in comparison with the autochthonous Lagomorphs, in particular with hares (litter size: cottontails 5, min. 1, max. 12 - Chapman et al. 1977; Meriggi 2001; hares 2.4, min. 1, max 5 - Hansen 1992; Meriggi et al. 2001; Smith et al. 2005). In this situation, scramble competition can favor cottontails.
The paper concludes with "we need further research results to increase the knowledge about the competition between cottontails and autochthonous Lagomorphs", but notably states that the Eastern cottontail is a probable disease vector of myxomatosis, European brown hare syndrome (probably could be made into an article), and Rabbit hemorrhagic disease to native lagomorphs: the cottontails in the study were immune to or had antibodies for the first two diseases, but were not susceptible to RHDV, and could transmit the first two through contact in the wild with European hares and rabbits. Reconrabbit 16:39, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Much of the information on this species' biology is covered in Rabbit. How much from there should be duplicated here? Reconrabbit 16:44, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

I saw the comment on use as food and "in mythology", and it is still warranted, so thank you. The only thing is that the former belongs more in Domestic rabbit, and the latter is hard to find in the literature I have access to, which cares more about conservation than culture when discussing human interaction. Reconrabbit 20:36, 27 January 2025 (UTC)


### European rabbit
I've listed this article for peer review because I want to make sure it is comprehensive of the subject. There are several sections that may seem missing - Biology and Mythology (in regards to cultural impact and appearance of the European rabbit, aside from their impact as an invasive species) - that I think are already covered as well as needs be in the articles Rabbit and Domestic rabbit. If there are obvious missing parts of a species article that should be here, especially as well-studied a subject as this, that feedback is sorely needed.
Thanks, Reconrabbit 17:46, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

A couple of quick comments (might be back for more later):
the article is listed as being in British English, so check spelling throughout (e.g. color, recognized)
I used a script to change it. I am not an expert in either spelling method.
please mention in taxonomy that Linnaeus was the first describer of this species, and consider citing his work with a link to the species page; as a bonus, you could add a few words about what he said about the species. Also, what was the 1874 work that transferred the taxon to its new genus?
Added name, date, reference. I don't know much Latin, but it doesn't seem like he wrote all that much about the species in the original account - "lives in southern Europe and Hispania, digging holes in sandy areas, its enemies are falcons, badgers, ferrets".
Oryctolagus cuniculus should be italicized through the article (in image captions and in references)
I did miss that in the first caption and later references, so should be corrected.
Esculenta (talk) 18:25, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi Reconrabbit!  In a few recent edits to European rabbit, you've added footnotes that are dependent on citations produced by templates. Here's one example. Thing is, these references aren't working: the footnotes are undefined.
Looks like this template is meant to produce the citation: {{Lagomorphs2018|chapter=Introduced Lagomorphs |first1=Brian D. |last1=Cooke |first2=John E. C. |last2=Flux |first3=Never |last3=Bonino }} but it doesn't seem to match the parameters you've given to {{harvnb}}. 
I tried fixing it by adding |ref={{harvid|Cooke|Flux|Bonino|2018}} to the {{Lagomorphs2018}} template, but that didn't help.
The same problem exists with your {{Lagomorphs2018}} reference to Delibes-Mateos, Villafuerte, Cooke, and Alves. And also with your {{HMW2016 Volume 6}} reference to Shai-Braun and Hacklander.
I noticed that you're the author of these templates, so you must have some idea into what's going on with the reference names. Are you able to suggest a fix for the three undefined target errors in this article?
Looks like Riverine rabbit has a similar problem.  -- mikeblas (talk) 16:38, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm not able to reproduce any issues with these references. I can imagine there may be an issue with the citation template getting transcluded, but it's not occurring when I look at any of these references in the article, either in the Vector 2022 or 2010 skin, logged in or logged out. In the last example, for instance, I can look at the article and scroll to the last section of the page, hover over footnote 137, and see that it points to "Schai-Braun & Hackländer 2016, pp. 126-127", and hovering over that it links to #CITEREFSchai-BraunHackländer2016, bringing up the full citation. Reconrabbit 16:54, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
That's odd. Certainly, you can see that the page is in the Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors, right? Oh -- is it possible that this is a false positive of that error condition? Maybe more {{sfn whitelist}} exceptions need to be added to these articles. -- mikeblas (talk) 16:57, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
I added the references using {{Lagomorphs2018}} and {{HMW2016 Volume 6}} to the SFN whitelist. It removed that category from the page. I am not sure why that comes up on this article and none of the others I use those templates on extensively (Red rock hare, Bunyoro rabbit) - maybe it's a combination of using those templates and Harv style references. Reconrabbit 17:17, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
Great! I think it worked. I made a similar fix over at Riverine rabbit. -- mikeblas (talk) 01:25, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
Okay, great. I have just found out that the template I based these off of ({{NUBASE2016}}) doesn't have these issues because it's listed on Module:Footnotes/whitelist. May be something to look into. Reconrabbit 02:36, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

@Reconrabbit From wild to domestic and in between: how domestication and feralization changed the morphology of rabbits, royalsocietypublishing.org (2 July 2025) Mariomassone (talk) 20:17, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Some things that jump out to me that may be useful:That feralization in rabbits does not simply lead to a morphological reversal to the wild form has been described previously for an island population but is a novel observation for rabbits more broadly. [...] We observe that wild rabbits have by trend greater facial tilt than many feral and domesticated specimens (figure 1A,B), which has been historically observed in some domestic rabbits. [...] Feral rabbits might exhibit morphologies as seen in domesticated or wild forms, but may also exhibit intermediate ones. -- Reconrabbit 20:57, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

I searched all over for a source for the range map currently in the article but could not find a good one. I am working on an SVG map that could replace it but have failed to find any information on the species' introduced distribution on a global scale. This site claims to use IUCN maps, but it must be from an older evaluation that has since had its range map deleted. Other papers are restricted in scope to a single country or region. There has to be a way to do this (like on the article for wild boar). Any ideas? -- Reconrabbit 13:58, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

I can't speak for the rest of the map, but I found this for the UK: [2]. Too bad the text is almost illegible. Mariomassone (talk) 18:21, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
There is a map showing all of Europe here, apparently from this site. Fortunately this also links to an old IUCN assessment, which is very likely to be the source of the map we have now. I forgot my password and can't get the shapedata right now, though. I may look out for other publications to append to the map, because the 2008 assessment does not address North America or Japan at all (while this among other outbreaks of rabbits in the United States are known, and Okunoshima is also a factor). -- Reconrabbit 18:38, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
Found this too. Mariomassone (talk) 18:28, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
New map is now in use. I'd like to nominate this as FA soon, but would like to promote volcano rabbit first. My peer reviews do not get much traction though I would like to think I contribute a good amount to those from others. -- Reconrabbit 17:32, 22 September 2025 (UTC)