Endangered
Volcano rabbit
Romerolagus diazi
Volcano rabbit is a mammal in the family Leporidae (order Lagomorpha) — Romerolagus diazi, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The volcano rabbit has dense, short fur. Its fur is yellowish brown across all of its body, and is softer on the rabbit's underside. Each hair is black at the base and tip and antimony yellow in the middle.
The volcano rabbit is one of the smallest rabbits in the world, having an adult weight that ranges from 386 to 602 g (0.851 to 1.327 lb) and a total length of 23.4 to 31.1 centimeters (9.2 to 12.2 in).
Its ears are small and rounded, measuring less than 4 centimeters (1.6 in) in length, and the hind feet are short, measuring 4.2 to 5.5 centimeters (1.7 to 2.2 in).
Range and habitat
Volcano rabbits are endemic to an area of only 386 square kilometers (149 sq mi) just southeast of Mexico City, in alpine scrublands surrounding four volcanoes (Cerro Tláloc, Popocatépetl, Iztaccíhuatl, and El Pelado). Historically, the volcano rabbit likely occupied larger areas within the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt and the Sierra Chichinautzin mountain range. The range of the volcano rabbit has since been fragmented into 16 (later 19) individual patches across these volcanoes due to human disturbance.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
It has been described as a diurnal animal, and is most active in the evening and early morning.
In crisis
Populations have been estimated as approximately 7,000 adult individuals over their entire range. Human developments surrounding the volcano rabbit's habitat—among them overgrazing, hunting, and burning of the species' preferred scrublands—have caused significant declines in population, even in protected parks. Both the IUCN and the Mexican government consider the volcano rabbit an endangered species.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) currently lists the volcano rabbit as an endangered species and, in 2019, estimated that roughly 7,000 rabbits remained in the wild, noting that the population was decreasing. Prior studies placed this population number between 11,000 and 25,000 individuals.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Volcano 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 Volcano rabbit, Wikidata item Q668030. 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.
