The desert cottontail is the rabbit of Wyoming’s low, dry basins, a species that trades forest cover for sagebrush and greasewood. Its 249 records run through Sweetwater, Albany, Carbon, and Laramie counties, from the Red Desert’s open steppe to the plains around Devils Tower National Monument and the river bottoms at Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge.
Living on the surface
Unlike a rabbit that digs, the desert cottontail rests by day in a shallow scraped depression called a form, tucked under brush, and it will borrow an abandoned burrow but rarely makes one itself. It feeds on grasses, cacti, and the bark and twigs of shrubs, drawing most of its water from what it eats, an arrangement built for country where standing water is scarce.
A summer of litters
Records crest in July, when breeding that began in early spring is still producing litters and half-grown young are foraging on their own. A female can raise several litters in one warm season, nesting in a fur-lined scrape she visits only briefly each day, so the young spend most of their early life hidden and still.
Status in Wyoming
NatureServe ranks the desert cottontail S5, Secure, in Wyoming, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
