Leverets are out in the open
Brown hares come into the world surprisingly ready for action
No mammal is more closely associated with spring than the brown hare, and by April the year’s first babies, called leverets, have arrived. If you’re lucky, you might spot some a few days old, hunkered down in a bed of grass. It may seem odd to see such young animals on their own, with no mother in sight, but the leverets are far from helpless.
When it comes to raising young, hares and rabbits are like chalk and cheese. Newborn rabbits, called kits, weigh just 30g and resemble naked, sightless sausages. By contrast, leverets weigh in at around 100g when they are born and look like fully-furred, perky mini-antelopes – at two days, they can already run pretty swiftly.
Where rabbit kits stay underground for their first two or three weeks, leverets start life out in the open. Their mother visits just once a day, to suckle them and tidy up, lingering only a few minutes to avoid attracting any unwanted attention.