Eastern Cottontail

I'm thinking that this (presumed) Eastern Cottontail is contemplating eating the grass seeds in front of it. As fairly common NJ mammals, I've seen them a lot and talked about them before (here, here, and here).

You've probably heard about rabbits, hares, and pikas (if you even know what pikas are) will eat their own scat. This is technically true, but it's a little more complicated than that. Unless us, these animals generate 2 different kinds of scat:

  1. Cecotropes, which are fermented, soft, gel-like droppings that are re-eaten. Going through the digestive system a 2nd time greatly helps them get all the nutrients out of their food. It sounds like this is also the way a mother transfers good gut bacteria to her kits.
  2. Conventional waste, which is hard, presumably has no nutritional value, and isn't re-eaten.

June 12, 2022 at Duke Farms
Photo 209947143, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)



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