By: Sylvia Yannsdottir

Bunnies are a very common animal, and oftentimes in the city you will see a few casually around your neighborhood. In the United States, the bunny population is an estimated 6.5 million, 4.3 million of which are wild bunnies, while 2.2 million of them are household pets. This number may seem high, but their population has been decreasing slowly over the past few years. This is because of multiple factors: like habitat loss, changes in available food and shelter, diseases, and increasing predators.

Typically, wild bunnies live up to 8-12 years. They are very small, and cute. They have excellent eyesight, digestion, and hearing. They have a wide variety of colored fur too, some of which are just one solid color, like brown, white, black, or grey, but sometimes they have a mixture of colors of fur.

Bunnies can have multiple litters per year, usually 3-5 every year. Each litter can contain anywhere between 4-12 babies. In the cities, it’s not too uncommon to find a nest of baby bunnies in your backyard.

Bunnies are very social and expressive animals that thrive in groups. Research has actually shown that they are very good at communicating, and they are excellent at forming strong bonds and friendships with each other. Bunnies can actually become very sad if they are deprived of being social with others.

Another thing that really shows how expressive bunnies can be are their binkies. A bunny can express its happiness through a leaping, spinning, kicking behavior called a “binky.” These are a very fun aspect of their behavior.

For the most part, wild bunnies are very calm, and unproblematic to their surrounding environment, although in some cases in the city it can be a struggle to maintain a garden if there are constantly bunnies eating the plants you may be trying to grow.