<p>In the early days on the farm when the place was still an expansive open field, we had our first encounter with one of Navilu Kaadu’s mammal species. We stumbled upon a leveret, a baby black-naped hare (Lepus nigricollis), in a thicket while having an agave plant uprooted.</p>.<p>Zoey, our furry pooch, decided to interrogate the stranger and approached the leveret. The teeny tiny hare, which up until then seemed helpless and immobile, hoisted itself up and bounded away, making wide arcs in the air.</p>.<p>Black-naped hares or Indian hares are medium-sized leporids (of the family Leporidae, consisting of hares and rabbits) between 40 and 60 cm. These solitary hares are endemic to the Indian subcontinent. They don a grey-brown pelt and get their name from the patch of black fur on the nape of their neck.</p>.<p>Hares are often erroneously called rabbits, which are not native to India. All hares belong under the genus Lepus, unlike rabbits. Among other variations, hares are larger and nest amid grass, while the petite rabbits are fossorial (burrowing). Baby rabbits or kits are altricial and are born furless and blind. The leverets of hares, on the other hand, are precocial and fairly mature at birth.</p>.<p>Black-naped hares are vital prey for formidable predators such as jackals, wolves, dholes, leopards and raptors, though they are not entirely defenseless. For starters, they are ace speedsters capable of clocking 70 to 75 kilometres per hour (kmph), dwarfing the record of 37.58 kmph by Usain Bolt, the decorated sprinter and the fastest human on the planet.</p>.<p>While Bolt sprints for glory, these hares bolt for their lives! A pair of strong hind limbs propel them as they outrun predators. Fur on the soles and sturdy claws ensure a firm grip. Long ears that can twitch and turn independently of each other help detect lurking predators and dissipate body heat. As crepuscular and nocturnal creatures active at twilight and at night, a pair of large eyes bestows them with night vision.</p>.<p>Indian hares relish short grasses in the monsoon and subsist on flowering plants in the dry season. They feast on crops too, which gets them in the bad books of farmers. Hares have a digestive adaptation called hindgut fermentation that helps them obtain nutrition from hard-to-digest plant cellulose. A large sac called the cecum teeming with bacteria, yeast and other gut flora, sits at the junction between the hare’s small and large intestines. While the digested matter progresses into the large intestine and gets excreted as hard droppings, the undigested cellulose is diverted to the cecum where the microbiota breaks it down to soft digestible, nutrient-rich pellets called cecotropes that the hare excretes and instantly consumes, in a behaviour called coprophagy — scientific parlance for eating one’s own shit!</p>.<p>How does the hare figure out if the stuff popping out of its tush is trash or treasure? The hare’s brain dispatches a special signal alerting it to the chow about to be extruded from its derriere. The hare then puts mouth to butt and devours the delicacy right away. Black-naped hares breed throughout the year, but they favour the monsoon season when food is abundant. The male hare is called a buck or a jack, and the female goes by doe or jill, and is larger than the jack. Come mating season, the jacks spar with one another, boxing rivals with their powerful hind limbs, for a chance to court as many jills as they can. Jills deliver anywhere between one and four leverets after a gestation period of around 45 days.</p>.<p>The leverets pop out of their mum’s womb with a fur coat and wide-open eyes. Leverets turn quick-footed in a couple of hours after birth. They are odourless and can sit motionless, all of which keeps them from ending up in a predator’s belly. The hare mum safely lodges her brood in dips called ‘forms’ amid grassy overgrowth, and nurses them for up to three weeks. Black-naped hares have a lifespan of around five years in the wild.</p>.<p>Indian hares keep plant populations in check and help disperse seeds, too. They inhabit scrubland, farmlands, grasslands and even the fringes of human habitation. Regardless of the black-naped hares’ adaptability, rampant poaching for meat and shrinking natural habitats, making way for urban sprawl, may soon push these creatures to the brink. </p>.<p>Rooting for Nature is a monthly column on an off-kilter urban family’s trysts with nature on a natural farm.</p>.<p><em>The author runs Green Goobé, a sustainable venture committed to a greener, cleaner planet. She posts as @ramyacoushik on Instagram. Reach her at bluejaydiaries@gmail.com</em></p>
<p>In the early days on the farm when the place was still an expansive open field, we had our first encounter with one of Navilu Kaadu’s mammal species. We stumbled upon a leveret, a baby black-naped hare (Lepus nigricollis), in a thicket while having an agave plant uprooted.</p>.<p>Zoey, our furry pooch, decided to interrogate the stranger and approached the leveret. The teeny tiny hare, which up until then seemed helpless and immobile, hoisted itself up and bounded away, making wide arcs in the air.</p>.<p>Black-naped hares or Indian hares are medium-sized leporids (of the family Leporidae, consisting of hares and rabbits) between 40 and 60 cm. These solitary hares are endemic to the Indian subcontinent. They don a grey-brown pelt and get their name from the patch of black fur on the nape of their neck.</p>.<p>Hares are often erroneously called rabbits, which are not native to India. All hares belong under the genus Lepus, unlike rabbits. Among other variations, hares are larger and nest amid grass, while the petite rabbits are fossorial (burrowing). Baby rabbits or kits are altricial and are born furless and blind. The leverets of hares, on the other hand, are precocial and fairly mature at birth.</p>.<p>Black-naped hares are vital prey for formidable predators such as jackals, wolves, dholes, leopards and raptors, though they are not entirely defenseless. For starters, they are ace speedsters capable of clocking 70 to 75 kilometres per hour (kmph), dwarfing the record of 37.58 kmph by Usain Bolt, the decorated sprinter and the fastest human on the planet.</p>.<p>While Bolt sprints for glory, these hares bolt for their lives! A pair of strong hind limbs propel them as they outrun predators. Fur on the soles and sturdy claws ensure a firm grip. Long ears that can twitch and turn independently of each other help detect lurking predators and dissipate body heat. As crepuscular and nocturnal creatures active at twilight and at night, a pair of large eyes bestows them with night vision.</p>.<p>Indian hares relish short grasses in the monsoon and subsist on flowering plants in the dry season. They feast on crops too, which gets them in the bad books of farmers. Hares have a digestive adaptation called hindgut fermentation that helps them obtain nutrition from hard-to-digest plant cellulose. A large sac called the cecum teeming with bacteria, yeast and other gut flora, sits at the junction between the hare’s small and large intestines. While the digested matter progresses into the large intestine and gets excreted as hard droppings, the undigested cellulose is diverted to the cecum where the microbiota breaks it down to soft digestible, nutrient-rich pellets called cecotropes that the hare excretes and instantly consumes, in a behaviour called coprophagy — scientific parlance for eating one’s own shit!</p>.<p>How does the hare figure out if the stuff popping out of its tush is trash or treasure? The hare’s brain dispatches a special signal alerting it to the chow about to be extruded from its derriere. The hare then puts mouth to butt and devours the delicacy right away. Black-naped hares breed throughout the year, but they favour the monsoon season when food is abundant. The male hare is called a buck or a jack, and the female goes by doe or jill, and is larger than the jack. Come mating season, the jacks spar with one another, boxing rivals with their powerful hind limbs, for a chance to court as many jills as they can. Jills deliver anywhere between one and four leverets after a gestation period of around 45 days.</p>.<p>The leverets pop out of their mum’s womb with a fur coat and wide-open eyes. Leverets turn quick-footed in a couple of hours after birth. They are odourless and can sit motionless, all of which keeps them from ending up in a predator’s belly. The hare mum safely lodges her brood in dips called ‘forms’ amid grassy overgrowth, and nurses them for up to three weeks. Black-naped hares have a lifespan of around five years in the wild.</p>.<p>Indian hares keep plant populations in check and help disperse seeds, too. They inhabit scrubland, farmlands, grasslands and even the fringes of human habitation. Regardless of the black-naped hares’ adaptability, rampant poaching for meat and shrinking natural habitats, making way for urban sprawl, may soon push these creatures to the brink. </p>.<p>Rooting for Nature is a monthly column on an off-kilter urban family’s trysts with nature on a natural farm.</p>.<p><em>The author runs Green Goobé, a sustainable venture committed to a greener, cleaner planet. She posts as @ramyacoushik on Instagram. Reach her at bluejaydiaries@gmail.com</em></p>