(Caveat: Buried treats can't often compete with the lure of small
prey animals.)
The scent of death: Chemosensory assessment of predation risk by
prey animals. Ecoscience 5:361-394.
As
prey animals, rabbits sometimes display behaviors people do not understand.
Swallowing takes some time and only works if the
prey animal doesn't make too much fuss!
The most likely factors seem to be those connected with potential threat that a
prey animal may pose to the predator.
If predator efficiency is lower when prey flock together, no special virtue attaches to a
prey animal who joins a flock and thereby helps all the others as well.
Failure of a
prey animal to recognize and respond to a predator increases the likelihood that it will be captured during an interaction with a predator.
At night, as the owl flies silently toward its prey, the
prey animal has no idea it's in danger.
Among Camelot's many exciting attractions is King Arthur's Bird of
Prey Animal Centre, where resident birds of prey perform a range of daring tricks in the daily show which has gone down a storm with visitors.
As Lisa says: "The horse is the ultimate
prey animal, and the human, the ultimate predator.
The status of the rabbit as a
prey animal has resulted in very different feeding and behaviour patterns and we must be able to recognise these if we are to successfully care for him as a pet.
Even something as simple as sitting very still or moving very slowly and quietly through the woods can lead a mountain lion to confuse a human with a large
prey animal.