Bunny Roundabout | Hacker News Reader

Bunny Roundabout

rachel.blog

73 pointsmiduil68 comments

Fwiw for anyone who wants to feed some bunnies, leafy greens are better for them than carrots. Give them a big bunch of parsley and they’ll love you forever.

Rabbits like carrot leaves, not the part of the carrot we eat.

The stereotype of Bugs Bunny munching on the end of a carrot comes from farmers complaining about rabbits destroying their carrots. Cartoonists misinterpreted this either accidentally or intentionally for better visuals.

(Humans can eat carrot greens too, though most people find other leafy vegetables tastier and easier to prepare).

> Rabbits like carrot leaves, not the part of the carrot we eat.

I took care of a pair of rabbits for a bit as a child. As relatively poor people, I couldn't afford to feed the rabbits actual carrots. I remember feeling amused at how the rabbits would (seemingly gladly) eat the green leaves of carrots (something we threw away) and not complain. I feel better about not being able to feed them actual carrots.

Thank you for the trip down memory lane. It is amazing how much we actually remember but never think about...

My father also grew up poor with rabbits. They would feed the rabbits things they would otherwise throw away, like carrot leaves and potato peels. Then they would eat the rabbits. Great way to turn inedible plants into edible protein.

Your basic point holds, but carrot leaves and potato peels are both perfectly edible.

Also, potato peels are delicious.

I don't peel my potatoes before making mashed potatoes or french fries, and they're tastier for it.

True! I eat them, but for some reason my grandmother refused to, so they gave them to the rabbits instead.

That and the carrot looked like chomping a cigar.

Bugs Bunny is interesting in that it had a large cultural influence.

It also turned "nimrod" into an insult, when people misunderstood Bugs Bunny sarcastically calling Elmer Fudd "Nimrod". Nimrod is a mighty hunter from the Bible, and Bugs' expression was equivalent to calling somebody stupid "Einstein".

So now "nimrod" effectively means "moron", though that wasn't the intention.

To be fair, "nimrod" sounds like a stupid word.

Darker the better, in my experience. They'll bite off your arm for some cavolo nero.

Time for Brother Maynard to fetch the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

Darker greens should be used sparingly with rabbits, because of the high calcium and oxalate content. Cilantro, parsley, basil, any lettuce except iceberg are all solid choices for keeping buns healthy, shiny and happy.

I'm certain this is solid advice, hindgut fermenters live on a knife edge.

Funny how a 1930s tribute to Mel Blanc's mannerism still make people think carrots are good for rabbits.

IIRC Blanc actually hated carrots, they kept a trash can next to him in the recording studio so he could immediately spit it out after a take involving a carrot crunch was done.

Fresh hay would be better still. Healthy rabbit diet should consist of 85-90% hay, some greens and fruit/sweets extremely sparingly.

My family has two rabbits (mini lops) in a large divided hutch on our pack patio. They each get a fist-sized portion of greens every day - parsley, cilantro, kale, etc. depending on what's on sale at the grocery store or about to be thrown out.

There's also a "treat" hidden in there somewhere. Sometimes that's a small baby carrot, sometimes it's a blackberry or raspberry, sometimes a piece of watermelon.

In addition to the above, they always have access to pellets, timothy hay, and water. If it's not wet out, we put them out in ~6' circular mesh pens to play for at least an hour each day.

They seem pretty happy with their lives, and are neither gaining nor losing weight. It's a far cry from the wire cages in an outbuilding where they spent the first couple of years of their lives for sure.

Isn’t kale one of the few greens rabbits aren’t supposed to eat?

It's super high in calcium, which can be a big problem.

We're usually feeding 3-4 different kinds of greens in each serving, though, and hay makes up the majority of their diet anyhow.

No. You fees rabbits timothy hay and alfalfa. These are the staples of a healthy rabbit's diet. Anything else, greens, carrots, banana, strawberry, are treats not food. Too much treats causes diarrhea, which can be fatal due to dehydration.

The problem originates with people releasing domesticated rabbits into the wild when they decide they no longer wish to care for them as pets. Unfortunately, this is almost always a death sentence for the creature which won't understand how to survive in the wild, lacks camouflage and will likely get picked off by a predator within several days. If you've ever taken a walk through Discovery Park near Seattle, you'll see a similar spectacle. Please, if you ever think about doing this, stop and bring the animal to a shelter, or try to re-home them yourself instead.

That seems like a very locale specific explanation. In Boston, rabbits are prolific, even with a very robust predator population. Our local rabbits also appear to have pretty good instincts and decent woodsy camouflage, not your bright white pet bunnies.

Any animal raised and cared for closely by humans is going to be unprepared for that. It’s cruel.

My point was that the majority of rabbits around me appear to be born wild, not released or escaped. In spite of the numerous coyotes, hawks, etc, you'll find plenty of them, year after year, like squirrels or chipmunks.

0daystock was making an absolute statement as if dozens of people in my neighborhood are releasing rabbits every year. That may be the case in some areas but I doubt it holds here.

Eh, cats usually adapt pretty well when transitioning from house cat -> stray cat, but they're probably an outlier as they're predators themselves.

That’s because a house cat is just a stray cat that’s decided to let you feed it for a while.

it's locale specific, but it's like, locale specific to places that do the bunny stuff for easter, which is like a material proportion of the earth

I don't understand the problem with this. Life is a death sentence; you are just allowing them to realize their destiny, and helping a hungry hawk. Isn't nature wonderfu?

Let me try and put it in a way hackers might understand: you're putting a buggy and out-of-date program with lots of exposed network ports and PII on the Internet with no firewall. We're all adults and can come to our own conclusions about the morality of this decision, but I think we can all agree deploying un-optimized code to prod is in poor taste.

I've seen a lot of bad analogies on HN. This is the worst.

Unlike in the US, European wild rabbits and domestic rabbits are actually the same species, so it's hard to tell if these rabbits are naturally wild, or were released.

Seems counterintuitive at first that rabbits should choose a roundabout as a place to live, but if you think about it, they're less likely to be disturbed by people, dogs etc. there than somewhere else. I don't know how far rabbits move away from their burrow, but as long as they don't have to do it to get food or to evade predators, I guess they prefer to stick pretty close to it, and the road probably isn't that inviting, which explains why they haven't been (all) run over by cars yet...

And they're often raised — rabbits love hills!

Similarly, in Finland there are some black-headed gull colonies that have chosen to live and nest in rail yards. The birds don’t seem to mind the freight trains passing by – or even literally over their heads – but apparently their predators and egg thieves are less comfortable with big noisy human things moving around.

I was driving near the border of Northern New Mexico and Texas recently on a state highway. I kept noticing groundhogs everywhere. Almost all the land is farmland out there. So I imagine it is plowed every year or so. The only strip of land is undisturbed is the right of way between the edge of the road & the fence. So groundhog colonies are basically all along the side of the road.

Edit: as pointed out below it's actually "Cynomys ludovicianus" or the Black-tailed prairie dog.

In that part of the country they would likely have been prairie dogs. And yes, they live sparsely all throughout the desert, but cluster more densely on the edges of cultivated land where there is more food.

Yes, I think the scientific name is Cynomys ludovicianus. Completely unafraid of vehicles as well, but smart enough to stay off the actual road surface.

Rabbits generally stick close to home but can range around 200m/660ft from their burrow (doing the math of 10 acres -> distance from center, ish).[1]

There's probably a lot to like about the roundabout. It's highly likely that at dawn and dusk they cross the road; rabbits around here have no problems doing that.

[1]: https://www.havahart.com/rabbit-facts

That’s a very tidy and well-maintained looking roundabout by UK standards.

Down south they are typically severely overgrown with weeds and covered in thick layers of litter and other debris.

Well done, Aberdeen!

And no visible drunkard! Take heed, Yorkshire!

It's Garthdee Roundabout, here on Streetview: https://www.google.com/maps/@57.1235518,-2.1213832,3a,75y,31...

Can even see them here https://www.google.com/maps/@57.1237885,-2.1221885,3a,62.7y,...

There is a bunny that spends time among our house and small set of neighbors for the past 2 years. Impressive that it has lived this long. We replaced grass with turf last fall and it disappeared for a while. I have seen it on the turf more recently again. I was surprised one day when looking in that area of yard and seeing how much poo it has left on the turf.

Rabbits are incredible pets, not least of which is because they leave virtually odor-free (being herbivores) droppings which can be collected and spread through the garden as compost/fertilizer. Our family of buns actually produces so much we have to give away garbage bags full of their product on craigslist to happy local farmers. Plus they don't make noise and have big personalities! I think they are excellent companions for adults. Not so much for kids, though.

Of course, complaints about what's on topic at HN always have the same, correct answer—it's on topic at HN if it's of interest to hackers, whether or not it's about hacking.

All the same, while I understand that blog entries don't have to be about anything in particular, I am curious about what made this worth surfacing here. There's a roundabout with some bunnies, people are feeding them, and it's not really clear who but no-one seems to mind—is there some significance to the story I'm missing, or was it just a pleasant bit of news?

I didn't personally upvote it, but I'm happy I saw it, as it was "just a pleasant bit of news" for me and the part about the "drive-by carroting" made me smile.

Also I learned that Aberdeen sees itself as the "Energy Capital of Europe" while I've never heard about the place before, and I've been around in Europe a lot in my years :)

It's the base for a lot of North Sea Oil and Gas companies, due to its location, which probably gives it some claim to the title, as any other contender closer to the center of europe would probably need to share access with other localities, while being on the extreme end concentrates things (while also making it kind of irrelevant if you're not involved in north sea oil or gas).

Randomly googled map to demonstrate:

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/2...

I tend to upvote the occasional post such as this for the simple reason that I sometimes just like to increase the diversity of content.

In this case I think this also has the potential for some very HN-ish dicussion. Rabbits and foxes is a classic CS topic after all! Ecology and population dynamics leads to some interesting maths.

Plus - bunnies.

I'd go even further: The environment is an important cost factor in business now and likely to become more so in the future. Understanding what it looks like when nature adapts to the changes we're making is valuable.

It's like the Peppered moths in England.[1]

While this specific story may have limited applicability to someone wanting to build a new cloud service business, keeping environmental impacts in mind can't hurt. Plus, bunnies.

Alternately, if you want to go full "rabbits are pests and should be removed", you can always make it a business opportunity.[2]

[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-evidence-peppe...

[2]: https://abcnews.go.com/International/rabbits-burned-fuel-swe...

This one's got me stumped too. I was expecting to see either an absurd amount of rabbits, or at least one adorable bunny.

It is a story that provokes “but why?”. Wouldn’t be out of place on that explainer part of the xkcd site.

I heard a (possibly apocryphal) story about traders at a London brokers releasing rabbits into the rooftop garden. People would look up in the atrium and see rabbits spread-eagled against the skylights, sun bathing.

I suspect the rabbits chose to take up residence inside the roundabout to avoid predators, who are probably unwilling to cross the busy traffic at most times of day.

Now that's what I'd call a hare pin.

Actchewally, carrots aren't great for rabbits. Too high in carbs. Better to toss them a good grade of organic romaine lettuce.

Carrots are great for rabbits! Just not the same part that humans like, but the other part that we usually throw away.

Sounds like rabbits need a similar diet to guinea pigs them.

At least there's somewhere to get food if civilisation collapses!

Also check large tree planters in front of skyscrapers.

The Aon Center, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois tower in Chicago are notorious for harboring dozens and dozens of rabbits.

They should reduce the speed limit on that roundabout. Actually, they should reduce the speed limit on all roundabouts...

Seems to be big enough to handle 30-40 km/h, but hard to judge from just the pictures. Obviously depending on the amount of traffic, the suitable speed might be lower/higher. Is the speed limit higher than that?

I just meant for safety reasons. Not just for the rabbits themselves — although I DO care about them! — but also for drivers who may be distracted by a rabbit suddenly running across the road.

The actual speed limit on that roundabout is an interesting issue! It's debatable, but the most accurate 'guidance' I can find is that it should be the speed of the majority of the approach roads — how you're supposed to work that out, sat in your own approach road, I don't know. The one in question is almost certainly 30-40 mph, which is about 50-65 km/h. In theory, some roundabouts have a 70mph speed limit, although they'll be very different from the one in question.

Disclaimer: UK driver, detest roundabouts.

Seems like it would be a pointless expense having to post new speed limit signage on the entrance and exit when (well designed) roundabouts naturally cause cars to slow to appropriate speeds.

A distracted driver is going to cause an accident no matter the speed limit.

Disclaimer: UK driver, love roundabouts.

Distracted drivers don't notice speed limit signs anyway. They'll do 25mph in 20, 30 and 40 mph roads.

If they're like the daft old bastards around here they'll do 37mph in 20, 30 and 40mph roads.

In 3rd.

I can't speak for that specific roundabout, but in my experience if various approach roads have different limits then they'll typically have signs changing them to match shortly before entering the roundabout.

So the speed limit on the roundabout is the limit on the road by which you entered, but note that it may have changed immediately before entering.

In this particular case, I'd assume the limit is 30 mph: it's in a built-up area with street lighting, and a quick look on StreetView doesn't seem to show any signage indicating otherwise.

(Pretty sure that on some larger roundabouts, e.g. on a 40 mph road, I've occasionally seen the small speed-limit reminder signs, but I don't recall ever seeing an actual change within a roundabout.)

Source: UK driver, much prefer roundabouts to most alternatives. :)

Roundabouts don't really need speed limit changes, because they're naturally self-limiting. Most roundabouts have the same limit as roads they're on, so there are lots of roundabouts that have 70 limits on, say, dual carriageways [1]. But that doesn't mean you drive on them at 70.

Speed limits aren't really a speed that it's safe to go at throughout the limited area (for example, a blind T junction is probably unsafe at 20mph, but can still be in a 50). It's a speed that it's not safe to exceed, even when the road conditions appear to suggest otherwise. On a roundabout, as at other junctions without priority, the road dictates the speed, not the signage. Exceeding the safe speed indicted by the road itself is still an offense of dangerous driving, even if below the posted limit.

[1]: For cars; HGVs and vans both have a lower limit on dual carriageways. Not that many van drivers appear to know that.

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