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There is a need to split hairs when it comes to identifying rabbits from hares (pun intended, by all means). We urge you to keep your hair on as we guide you through the not so subtle differences which sets rabbits and hares apart. Unfortunately, chomping down on carrots and greeting people with the classic “Ehhh, what’s up Doc?” prior to going around creating Loki-level havoc is not one of these differences. 

The main point is to know that there are no wild rabbits in Sri Lanka. Those cuddly fluffballs you croon over and whisper sweet nothings to at pet shops and farms, are domesticated breeds. What we do have, stomping about in ever prescient and palpable anxiousness and nervousness that would drive a therapist up the wall, are wild hares.

Black-naped hare ©N. A. Naseer / http://www.nilgirimarten.com
Common Hare – ©Diego Delso / delso.photo / License CC BY-SA

Hares are comparatively bigger and leaner than rabbits (size can not be a reliable metric as there are pet rabbits the size of IKEA coffee tables) and generally tend to have longer ears and stronger legs. Hares can run real fast because they inhabit open spaces (That’s why the fable is about the tortoise and the hare and not about the rabbit). 

©notesonzoology.com

Hares are mainly nocturnal (though it is not uncommon to see them during daylight hours) and during the day they usually keep a low profile using their fur coats to blend in really well with their surroundings. They also make sure to make little to no sound unless injured, and have been observed to communicate with other hares by drumming their feet on the ground. Like their name of the subspecies that’s found in Sri Lanka implies, the back of their necks (nape) are black. When they lie down and make a loaf, the nape becomes not that visible.

Unlike rabbits who live in underground “warrens”, hares have a sort of nest made of a dry bed of coarse grass called a “form”. These forms often expose hares to nearby predators, so they have to be ever vigilant (which explains their constant neurotic state that makes Courage the Cowardly Dog look sane).

A hare’s form – ©Des Colhoun / geograph.org.uk
Rabbit warrens – ©Chris Eilbeck / geograph.org.uk

The diet of black-naped hares mainly comprises grasses, leaves, herbs, fruit and seeds. They also have the habit of performing coprophagy, a wonderful word derived from the Greek copros, “feces” and phagein, “to eat”… Basically, they eat their own poop. Why? Well it’s certainly not because one hare took something another angry hare said, quite literally! They engage in coprophagy because their stomachs aren’t capable of  digesting most of the plant material they ingest. So, by literally eating their own feces, they are able to absorb the much needed nutrients from the ingested plant materials, which were not absorbed the first time around. 

We all learned in our primary school days about how much the “Haawaa / හාවා” (as it is called in Sinhala, also a blanket term for both rabbits and hares in Sri Lanka) loves to eat the three-flower beggarweed (Grona triflora) or “Undupiyaliya / උඳුපියලිය”. Actually there is no recorded evidence that it prefers to gorge on this plant like Garfield loves lasagna. Also, many an Asian folklore states that there is a rabbit on the moon. This is a myth that  originated in China and spread to other Asian cultures, while Europeans believe that there is a man on the moon, who was banished there for some crime.

Hare or Man? ©Zeimusu / Wikimedia Commons
Three-flower beggarweed ©Dinesh Valke / Ankuca-pati

Hares are solitary animals and prefer to stay that way unless they are rearing their young. They are fecund, which means that they can give birth to a large litter at one time, which gave rise to the expression “breeding like rabbits” (although in this case it should be hares). Newborn hares are called “leverets.” Leverets are born precocial (which means that a newborn is able to feed itself and move independently, immediately after birth) and with a full coat of fur. This can be construed as an evolutionary adaptation to the fact that their “forms” offer next to no protection, as opposed to the “warrens” (talk about leverets having evolutionary leverage).

Leverets ©Autumnalis / Wikimedia Commons

They have an island wide spread and so far the main threats they face are habitat destruction and poaching, where the latter has become the most prominent threat. Makeshift snares set up to catch hares can end up costing the life of other animals as well, as snares do not discriminate. They fulfill the role that nature has bestowed on them, and it’s up to us to raise awareness, ensuring their safety and freedom for days to come.

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Pied kingfishers (Ceryle rudis) are a minimalist’s wet dream. They pack up so much suave and swag for a bird with a two-tone (which is what pied means, bi-colored and not getting a pie thrown in your face) color palette, it’s just ridiculous. They are that beautiful. Out of the seven species of kingfisher found in Sri Lanka, they are the third most common (more or less) which is the same for their worldwide distribution where they are found from sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia from Turkey to India to China. Apart from their large distribution, they tend to prefer a more permanent home. They do migrate short distances depending on seasons but do not undertake continent-spanning migrations like most birds.

They have no need to hunt on land as their prey is entirely or mostly aquatic (small fish, crustaceans, aquatic insects, small frogs, etc). So, like hummingbirds, they have become adept at hovering above a stationary point and when you look at videos of them hovering, you can clearly see that only their wings move and the head is motionless and the body is positioned at a roughly 45-degree angle to the water surface. The wings move in a figure-eight position (like the infinity symbol) so they can create the lift they need to be airborne and their wings move at a rate of 10 movements per second! 

Pied Fisher exiting the water with a fish. Photograph by Anjallee Prabhakaran.

This high energy output makes them voracious eaters and they need to eat approximately 50% of their body weight, every day, to survive. They can cover large bodies of water without the constant need for a perch close by because of their amazing hovering skills (this is called “aerial perching”). They hover over the waterline, sometimes fifty feet up and once they lock down their prey (they have this amazing ability to compensate for the effects of refraction caused by water and pinpoint their prey exactly), they dive beak first (like a guided missile) and snatch their prey and gulp it down mid-flight or would take it to the perch to stun it before gulping head first (The reason why birds swallow a fish head first is because that way, the fish scales won’t irritate their insides while it travels down to the stomach).

When they would finally perch on a nearby branch, they would bob their heads up and down and start gossiping with the neighbors about the day (gets as loud as the manning market on a Saturday noon). They are very gregarious (loves company) and would hang out in small groups. Also, it is not unlikely to see large roosts at night. Males and females look alike but easy to tell them apart because of the bands on their chests. Males have a thick band on top and a thin one below and females only have one thick band which is sometimes broken down in the middle.

Photographs by Sayuru Imesh.

Like their common kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) cousins, pied kingfishers make their nests on earthy banks closer to a water source. Both sexes put their backs (and beaks) into making the tunnel and it usually measures about 1m in length. Then the female lays about four to 5 eggs and the male helps with the incubation and the feeding of the female throughout the whole process. Because of their sociable nature, other members of the group would willingly help parents to look after their chicks (which is called cooperative breeding). Up to four “nannies” would volunteer their services and usually, the nannies in question are adults who failed to raise their own chicks or the parent’s adult kids from a previous litter. Guess it is family first for these critters (Somewhere, Dom Toretto sheds a tear).

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To understand how big an Indian flying fox (Pteropus medius) can be, you have to see one in person. Upon seeing one up close you half expect it to swoop down, punch you in the face (because you didn’t bother to put that toffee wrapper in the bin) and growl “I’m Batman” before vanishing into the darkness. Apart from their size, they’re notorious for their mind-bogglingly large colonies on isolated, large trees in rural or urban areas, preferably near a good source of water. Why near water you might ask? Well it’s because they lose a substantial amount of water compared to their size, because of the large surface area their wings occupy. Hence, they have a large requirement for water compared to other animals of similar size and weight. 

They do tend to keep a low profile and try to keep it down a notch, but if it gets too hot (like it always does at noon in Sri Lanka) or if they have too many mouths for per fruit, they express their discomfort quite raucously (somewhat similar to a Colombo school Big Match at maximum capacity. Loud right?) and flap their wings around to regulate the excess heat. The wings of a fruit bat are highly vascularized. which means that there’s a large network blood vessels within them. So when they flap their wings the outside air cools the blood flowing through the vessels, thereby cooling their bodies effectively (DIY aircon anyone?). Living near large bodies of water also allows them to take advantage of the cool air circulating over the water, and also allows them to rehydrate easily. But when the air temperature dips and it gets comparatively cooler, they wrap their leathery wings around themselves and relax.

These bats are mainly frugivorous and nectarivorous, which means that their diet mainly consists of ripening or overripe fruits (mango, cashew plums, plantains, guava, figs and papaw) and the nectar of flowers, respectively. This is another explanation as to why they choose to roost near rural and urban areas. It is because of the ease of access to rural and urban gardens which are more often than not, full of fruit trees, unlike dense forests (inside of which bat colonies are never found). 

Bats are for the large part, nocturnal creatures and are known for their echolocation abilities which enable them to navigate around obstacles and catch prey in extremely low visibility conditions. Flying foxes on the other hand, use their keen sense of smell and large sensitive eyes to locate their favorite fruit trees. Their immense love for all things fruit has labeled them as vermin by fruit farmers, due to the sheer amount of cash crop that they consume (much like when Obelix [Jim Pappa] goes to that one restaurant and just polishes off all the dishes, causing the chef a hysterical nervous breakdown). As a result, many farmers are known to destroy any flying fox roosts that are near important crop lands. 

But the thing that most people don’t know, is that flying foxes are extremely important for the pollination and seed propagation of a large number of plant species. Thus outweighing their destructive feeding habits. Plus they tend to target overripe fruit which doesn’t have a long shelf life anyway. There are however ways of mitigating the damage caused by flying foxes to crops. Erecting netting around the crops, picking them on time, or planting Jam Fruit Trees (Muntingia sp.) around the crops would be the best sustainable method of deterrence. Why? Because they love jam fruit, and so do the pale-billed flowerpecker (Dicaeum erythrorhynchos), a bird no larger than a human palm, capable of zipping around branches like a kid on a sugar rush, while gorging down jam fruits. 

Flying foxes are highly social creatures, as evident by their large colonies. Their social structure is a male dominated hierarchy and is structured like any corporate office where higher ranked males occupy the highest branches (Penthouse for the CEO) and lower branches for the low ranks (cubicles for the executives). Males are responsible for preventing outsiders from entering their roost. Like that Nelly Furtado song, Indian flying foxes are a promiscuous bunch. That is, they are polygynandrous, aka, mate with multiple partners. Come breeding season, male testes get bigger (supply and demand) and copulation occurs after a male corners a female after a lengthy chase. Mating season is from July to October with one to two pups per litter born six months after. Pups are born feet first, enabling them to grab onto its mother as soon as it is born. Pups are looked after by the females, as males are known to shoot and scoot, and are not involved in the rearing of the cubs.

Flying foxes, though adorable and ecologically important, are vectors for several viruses that can infect humans. The main ways to curb the transmission of zoonotic diseases is to take some pretty basic preventive measures. These could be as simple as safeguarding water sources used by humans from bat poop, not consuming fruits that have been partially consumed by a flying fox or any other animal, and so on. 

The most important thing is to not eat them, no matter how exotic or adventurous it sounds. They are not a food item! Though they may be a staple diet in many indigenous cultures, if you take the time to read about them (the people not the bats!), you learn that they are riddled with horrible diseases generation after generation, because of the diseases transmitted to them through the consumption of flying foxes and other bat species. This is one of the main reasons why bushmeat consumption and the exotic wildlife trade must be strictly mitigated.