World Simulation: Rabbit

Drew a rabbit like icon and have it displaying. No data behind the image still working out the details of the data that will be needed. I started up a discussion in the forums.

Picking a rabbit seems to be a good choice of animals to pick. Lots of data and studies on these little critters. Found an article that confirms my simplified simulation seems to be going down the correct path. I can't read the full article, but the abstract gave me enough information on determining what my vitality figure for a cell represents and how to relate it to the rest.

Rabbits eat a lot over a year. I'm going to use the 1.7% as a base reference. I'm calculating that a rabbit consumes all net productivity of .0068 hectares. My little play pen is representing .01 hectares. Since this is not southern Ill, but my version of Eden. I should see less of an impact. Even so this .01 hectares could only support 3 rabbits at most before there is a gradual degradation of the cell.

Found some other links that gave ranges of food pellets in grams that a rabbit can consume in an average day. It comes out to between 25-50 grams per kilo per day. I figure that an average grassy plot of 10 sq meters may contain between 5-10 pounds of grass. Thats 1270-2540 grams of grass. Since those are pellets and pellets contain cereal grains in them and no water. A rabbit would eat maybe twice as much in unprocessed food. Just from what I have put together I'm getting between 20 and 30 cells to support a rabbit. It looks that I might be estimating high on the grass weight or underestimating the consumption needs of a rabbit.