The Omiltemi cottontail rabbit caught in a camera trap – credit, Re:Wild
A species of cottontail rabbit endemic to Mexico has been seen again for the first time in over 100 years following a committed search by biologists.
For more than 4 years, GNN has paid close attention to a special conservation mission called the “25 Most Wanted” list—a name that invokes bounty hunters and bandits, but which actually focuses on species lost to science.
Over those 4 years, the organization behind the list, called Re:Wild, has located 13 of those species, which range from funghi and insects to larger animals like deer.
This most recent hit was the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit—unmistakable for its small and black puffball of a tail, so counterintuitive to the reference to “cotton” in its name. This enigmatic rabbit was last seen by scientists in 1904 and was feared extinct, but after a five-year search in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountain range of Mexico, it’s clear the little hopper is undoubtedly still among us.
“Just knowing that it had been 100 years, and no other scientist had seen a live [Omiltemi] rabbit is incredible,” said José Alberto Almazán-Catalán, a biologist who led the search. “It’s totally different from the regular cottontail, and I was completely amazed and very happy to have had that opportunity to see one.”
As with any decent search effort, Almazán began at the LKP, the last known position. Back in 1904 that was a very rural area, but it’s now a forest on the edge of Chilpancingo, the capital city of the state of Guerrero with a population of over 200,000 people.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, no trace of the Omiltemi rabbit was found, and so in 2020, the hunters switched their focus to conifer forests at higher elevations.
Once there, the hunters met another kind of hunter—subsistence hunters—who had in fact seen the rabbit very recently on their dinner plates. This is the sort of local knowledge that has been key to finding several of the other 12 lost species discovered by the initiative, not necessarily because they’re all hunted, but because small rural community members in places like Indonesia don’t publish in scientific papers, and may see animals daily that haven’t been seen by scientists in decades.
Fortunately the Omiltemi breeds, well, like a rabbit, and despite not being seen by scientists since 1904 and being an extremely range-restricted critter, the population has been able to replenish itself from late winter to late spring such that locals occasionally caught them for food.
It wasn’t long after the encounter with the hunters that live individuals were recorded—their little black tails giving them away immediately.
“Eighty percent of the objectives of this project have been achieved,” said Almázan. “However, we still need to learn more about the natural history of this species.”
During the interview with the hunters, virtually all locals agreed that if the rabbit species was at risk of disappearing from subsistence hunting, they would alter their hunting patterns according to scientific recommendations to ensure that didn’t happen.
According to a statement from Re:Wild, the Search for Lost Species has rediscovered 13 of its “Most Wanted” species: Jackson’s climbing salamander in Guatemala, Wallace’s giant bee in Indonesia, velvet pitcher plant in Indonesia, silver-backed chevrotain in Vietnam, Somali sengi in Djibouti, Voeltzkow’s chameleon in Madagascar, Sierra Leone Crab in Sierra Leone, Pernambuco holly in Brazil, De Winton’s golden mole in South Africa, Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna in Indonesia, Fagilde’s trapdoor spider in Portugal, big puma fungus in Chile, and the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit in Mexico.
SHARE The News Of This Great Rediscovery Down In Mexico With Your Friends…