Victoria Clare wrote in message .240.20...
(Mike Lyle) wrote in
om:

The Romans introduced them, along with ground elder, big snails and a
lot of other things, and the Normans enclosed areas to farm rabbits.

I don't know what changed things, but I suspect that enough escaped to
lower the value of kept rabbits to the uneconomic and unnecessary.

As usual, it was a combination of farming practices and employment and
leisure patterns, rather than the behaviour of the animals themselves.

Are you sure about that?
Early rabbit-keepers considered their rabbits to be delicate hothouse
creatures that needed a lot of looking after.

They may simply have been wrong, of course, but given the breeding speed
and adaptability of rabbits, it seems likely that some degree of adaption
to the colder wetter climate took place, in the same way that modern
rabbits have developed a level of resistance to myxomatosis.

I'm sure that's right; but it clearly didn't take them a thousand
years to adapt. The rabbit population "explosion" is very much a
matter of human perceptions.

Mike.