Nearly all of Oklahoma’s 56 desert cottontail records, 49 of them, come from Cimarron County at the far tip of the Panhandle. Black Mesa State Park and Nature Preserve and the surrounding mesa country anchor a population that sits at the very eastern edge of a species centered on the deserts of the American Southwest.
A rabbit built for dry country
Desert cottontails carry the longest ears of any rabbit in the state, laced with blood vessels that dump heat on hot afternoons, and they get most of the moisture they need from grasses, cacti, and other forage rather than open water. Unlike the eastern cottontails that dominate the rest of Oklahoma, they readily shelter in burrows dug by other animals, a habit that suits a landscape with little thick cover. Texas County and a handful of records from Woodward and Comanche counties trace the thin band of suitable habitat running east from the Panhandle.
Spring and early fall activity
Counts build from March to a May and June peak as breeding gets underway, with a smaller September rise, while January, February, October, and December show no records at all. As with most rabbits, desert cottontails do the visible part of their living at dawn and dusk, which keeps even a fairly common local animal easy to miss in the heat of an Oklahoma summer.
Status in Oklahoma
NatureServe carries the desert cottontail as SNR, unranked at the state level, while the species remains secure globally. It is native to Oklahoma, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous.
Full species profile
