The white hare belongs to the class of mammals, the order of the hare-like, the family of hares, the genus of hares.
Habitat
The mammal is distributed in the north of Eurasia. The main habitats are tundra, forest and forest-steppe areas where the hare usually lives separately.
With a change in forage land and worsening weather conditions, these animals can move a considerable distance from their habitat.
The hare lives in a wide geographic range. These are the entire tundra and forest zones of the northern part of Europe (Poland, Scandinavia, Scotland), Russia, Mongolia, and Northeast China. He was also brought to South America (Chile, Argentina).
Appearance
An adult hare reaches a length of 43-61 cm, and its tail is small - 4–7 cm, its ears are 7.6–10 cm long, and weighs 1.6–4.5 kg. "Northern" hares are much larger than their "southern" relatives. The color varies depending on the season. The hare is completely white in winter, and in the summer season the habitat affects the color - the fur becomes reddish-gray or brown. The color change in a hare is called molting. Shedding takes place twice during the year - from the end of February to May (in spring) and from October to January - in the winter. The duration of the color change process is shorter in the warm spring than in the cold. On average, the color change of a hare lasts about 80 days.
What does the hare eat?
Diet is determined by the habitat and season of the year. The hare belongs to herbivorous animals. In the summer, forest residents enjoy eating green vegetation, and the inhabitants of the tundra eat alpine grasses. Hares eagerly eat cereals, lichens, oats and clovers. However, in winter, when all the food is mostly covered in snow, they feed on bark of shrubs and various trees.
In autumn and winter, harder food is included in the diet of whites; at that time they feed on the bark of trees (willow, aspen, birch), various berries (dog rose, mountain ash, bird cherry, juniper) and take out pine cones from under the snow. This causes a deficiency in the diet of mineral salts, so hares sometimes eat soil, animal bones and pebbles.
Breeding
The hare has a sex ratio of approximately 50 to 50. When puberty is reached, the hare begins to breed. The offspring of a female happens 2-3 times, but more often 2 times a year. The time of the first rut falls on February-March, the second - on May-June. The duration of pregnancy in hares is from 47 to 54 days. The female gives birth to four rabbits, each weighs approximately 90 g. The size of the mother completely determines the number of rabbits in one brood - the larger the female, the more cubs will be born in one offspring.
The body of the newborn hare is completely covered with thick fur. A hare mother feeds her children breast milk for an average of four weeks. The female’s milk is very oily and nutritious, therefore she feeds her cubs only once a day. The white hare reaches puberty at 10 months. The life expectancy of hares in the wild ranges from 7 to 17 years, but most of them do not live up to the age of five for various reasons.
Features of the hare
Relations between the sexes are formed in such a way that the males dominate the females. During the breeding season, sometimes males tend to mate with the same female, which often causes fights between them.
During the day, the white hare most often sleeps because it is a nocturnal animal.
It so happens that during severe winter cold weather, when the amount of food is insufficient, these animals use cereals (cereals) and the bark of fruit-bearing trees as food, thereby causing economic harm to people. The hare is an important object of sports hunting. A man hunts him for the sake of skin and meat.
As already mentioned, the hare is able to live for almost 17 years, but in most cases its life expectancy is not more than 5 years. The main reasons are different predators (fox, lynx, golden eagle, eagle owl), as well as parasites and insufficient food, especially in winter.