So /an/ I want to try an experiment. The rabbits are thick around the small town I live in and it got me thinking: if I were to catch live female rabbits and bred them with domesticated ones, with unnatural coloration or lop ears, how long would it take to notice an actual change in the rabbits around here? I know the odd colored offspring would be less likely to survive but eventually the gene pool would become saturated enough that I could see some variation in the wild species. Also is this ethical?
I shot a piebald rabbit in a wild population and 1 out of every 50 I shoot is black.
They wouldn't survive long enough even without predators. Also everything eats rabbits in general to begin with. From cats, foxes, tons of birds, etc.
And no, it's not ethical.
I don't know how accurate this is, but I've heard that domestic rabbits are so far apart from wild ones that they do not produce viable offspring.
>>2137383
Totally inaccurate
Dogs can still breed with wolves and we've been taking them farther away from wolves for thousands of years longer than rabbits.
>>2137417
Reading up on it, it's actually not entirely inaccurate.
Domestic rabbits cannot breed with American hares or cottontails because they're descended from European rabbits. So depending on where you live, they may or may not be able to breed with your local wild rabbits.
>>2137267
Your issue would be the varied rabbits would die before they could reproduce. There is a reason wild rabbits don't have floppy ears or spots. It would be unethical considering you are attempting to change a wild population for worse; they would be less suited to survive and could cause a sudden and quick decrease in local pop, which in turn may fuck up the food chain or allow another species pop to increase too much with lack of competition.
>>2137267
This would be more ethical if you sell the hybrids to people, but unless you have some rabbit handling skills I doubt this will work.
