Bunny booms and bunny busts have deeper roots than bunny lusts. When dark spots obscure the sun, the clock runs out on bunny fun.
The snowshoe hare of northern Canada and Alaska offers a lesson in bouncing back from hard times. Every ten years or so, its population goes through a complete boom-to-bust cycle, collapsing almost to zero, then soaring back up just as quickly. A square mile of Yukon woods that had supported 600 hares in 1980 might have less than a dozen in 1985, and then 600 again in 1990.
Ecologists think they understand how the booms and busts come about. Snowshoe hares feed on the shoots of tree saplings, and when shoots are plentiful, the hares breed extravagantly. After a while the animals that eat the hares begin to multiply as well. When the hares have wiped out their food supply, and their predators have become numerous, ...
