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Chance of a black wild rabbit?

Ben's mum

Warren Veteran
Twice now I've seen a pure black, young looking rabbit on a grassy verge on my way home. Now, I know it is possible to get wild black rabbits, so I didn't stop the first time, but after passing it last night I wondered what the chances of it being wild were. I know it's baby bunny season, and it has the shape of a wild rabbit (uppy ears, bigger than a Nethie, slim shape), should I be stopping to see if it's tame enough to let me get near it or should I leave it alone? It's a bit of a busy road so I'd have to find somewhere safe to walk to it and then risk scaring it into the road infront of a car, which would be a real tragedy if it was actually a wild rabbit that needed to be left where it was!
 
There was a thread ages & ages ago that wildies came in other colours - naturally & as a result of wildies breeding with escaped & abandoned domestic buns

I saw a NZ white one year on the A64 outside York- a year later I've seen several white wildies:D

The wildies at work are huge aswell - I don't know if it's cos they get good & secure feeding area as it's our compound or if they are crosses.
 
All our bunnies naturally descended from wildies, so the colour mutations have to be possible. I would also think, with people releasing their bunnies into the wild you will start to get first, second, third generation wild bunnies with colours other than agouti.

My Roger is a former wild bunny and is black. I love having him and he is happy here but he really should never have been caught from the wild. I would guess he is probably descended from domestic parents set wild, so only knew wild until he came to me.

The toss up is whether to try and catch a bunny and potentially get a wild bun in captivity (which is not necessarily best), or leave it and risk leaving a domestic bunny. Risks either way, but DON'T risk yourself walking along a busy road! Maybe call the RSPCA? They can then make their effort to catch it.
 
black is quite common in wildie as it seems to be one of the few domesticated colours that survives well outside. I also wonder whether black is perhaps a dominant colour or at least as strong as agouti where as other colours might be more submissive to agouti and get phased out over time where as black continues down the generations?

Are you down in dorset by the way? There are a lot of black wildies down there.
 
we saw a orange coloured wildie once.
Well we chased it up and down harpenden common for half hour thinking he was a pet with him wondering what on earth we were up to.
Then we saw him hop off with his wildie friends in the unergrowth and realised he wasnt a domestic bun after all :oops: but was very much a wild one. :oops:
We felt like right plums he OH and I :lol:
 
I saw a black one on Monday on my way back to work. I pulled over to check it wasn't a stray bun, but saw its other agouti litter mates hopping around.

I was quite relieved as I'd only got 10mins of my lunch break left - didn't fancy running like a nutter alongside a dual carriageway tring to catch a bun!!:lol:
 
I have seen a black wildie 4 times this week on my way to work at Stirling . The first day I stopped as I wasn't sure it was a widie and thought it was a rabbit what had been throwing out but they were oads of wildies munching grass with it so I left it alone and it seems to be part of the wild family out there
 
We often get black wildies here, there were 2 the first year we moved in, one lived for about 3 years in our field. We had another youngster last year, but it caught myxo.:(
 
There's a little jet black bun living wild near my work..I think he must be a wildie as I always see him with other wildie buns, all about the same size. They live in some scrub land and they stay hidden in the brambles when they hear me approaching. x x
 
we saw a orange coloured wildie once.
Well we chased it up and down harpenden common for half hour thinking he was a pet with him wondering what on earth we were up to.
Then we saw him hop off with his wildie friends in the unergrowth and realised he wasnt a domestic bun after all :oops: but was very much a wild one. :oops:
We felt like right plums he OH and I :lol:


Aaahahah! I have done the exact same thing! And my friend was thoughtful enough to get photographic evidence of me being a wally!

See the colour difference between these two buns?!


I got quite a lot of bunny disaproval too!


There are several orangey buns now - they live on the hill by my house so I often see them wandering around. They seem to be thriving. No idea if it's a wildie colour mutation or if someone ditched a pet though :?
 
There are a few black wild bunnies that I’ve in a field near me. Must admit, thought the first one I saw was an escaped/abandoned domestic, but then saw it mixed in with the other wildies and it was quite clear it belonged there.

The black bunnies go well with all the black squirrels we now have in this area :D
 
Near where my nan lives there is, or at least was, a black bun. She was pretty sure he was a pet that had been released, and seemed to have joined up with a group of wildies. Soon there was quite a few black babies too. This in Surrey by the way :wave:
 
There was a thread ages & ages ago that wildies came in other colours - naturally & as a result of wildies breeding with escaped & abandoned domestic buns

Wasn't there a programme a while back on BBC about an Island that was full of wild rabbits all different colours because someone had released a load of domestic ones there? It began with S I think?
 
Spotted a Black Rabbit Yesterday

I know this thread is ancient however yesterday while on the golf course I came across a beautiful adolescent black rabbit along with a couple of her/his siblings.

It caused me to search for an answer to the question: “ Is this a natural occurrence or is it from a domestic rabbit getting into the wild population”?

At any rate I was able to get a few snapshots before the rabbits were spooked.

Any thoughts?
 
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