Amami rabbit

The mammal

Amami rabbit is a mammal in the family Leporidae (order Lagomorpha) — Pentalagus furnessi.

Range and habitat

The ideal habitat for these rabbits is in an area between mature and young forests. Therefore, the best habitat for them to live in is where they have easy access to both young and mature forests with no obstructions between the two forest types. Using fecal pellet counts and resident surveys, the number of rabbits is estimated at 2000–4800 left on Amami Island and 120–300 left on Tokuno Island.

The Amami rabbit, also known as the Ryukyu rabbit, is a dark-furred species of rabbit that is found only on Amami Ōshima and Tokunoshima, two small islands between southern Kyūshū and Okinawa in Japan. Often called a living fossil, the Amami rabbit is a living remnant of ancient rabbits that once lived on the Asian mainland, where they died out, remaining only on the two small Japanese islands where they live today.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

During summer, the Amami rabbit primarily feeds on Japanese pampas grass, and during winter, they primarily eat the acorns of the pasania tree. This species is a nocturnal forest-dweller that reproduces once in late March–May and once in September–December, having one or two young each time.

In crisis

Before 1921, hunting and trapping were another cause of decline in population numbers. The Amami rabbit also faces huge threats from the invasive predators, being a major cause for the decline in population size. Feral cats and small Indian Mongooses proved to be a threat to not only Amami rabbits but several other endangered endemic species in the area such as the Amami jay.

Research and population monitoring also are underway to try to keep the numbers from declining, even if they cannot be increased. Suggested conservation work for the future includes habitat restoration and predator population control, as a healthy balance of mature and young forests still exists on the southern end of Amami.

Amami rabbit is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Amami rabbit, Wikidata item Q687102. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.