Picture the scene. It’s around dawn on an August morning at Pellat Lake on the headwaters of Nunavut’s Back River. I’m sitting on my cabin porch to watch the sunrise when quick movements on the esker high above camp catch my eye. Foxes?
I leave the porch and creep up the slope, staying low in the heather. In a moment, I’m treated to the sight of creatures making great aerial leaps. These aren’t foxes, but arctic hares—three of them—engaged in an energetic ballet. They crouch, rear and leap off their hind legs, jumping over each other and dashing in circles, silhouetted against the sky. Two stand up straight, batting at each other with their front feet as the third does arabesques around them. Then, a raven flaps by, croaking, and the hares dash off along the esker.
A short show, but, like so many Arctic moments, one vividly impressed on my memory.
Arctic hares are the largest of the lagomorphs, the order that includes both rabbits and hares. They are common in tundra areas and at high latitudes. You’ll also find a different species, the snowshoe hare, in the boreal forest and on the alpine tundra of mountainous areas.
Hares are rabbit-like in appearance and share several features with their cousins. Both have two pairs of upper incisors, for example, with the second, much smaller pair growing behind the first. Both species also have eyes located on the sides of their heads and can see in almost 360-degree circles, a handy attribute for animals at the base of the food chain.
But overall, there are far more differences between the species. Hares are larger and have longer legs than rabbits, as well as longer ears (often black tipped) and much larger feet. Hares also tend to run from threats, rather than hide, as rabbits do. The two species also exhibit different behaviours in living space and reproduction. With the exception of the North American cottontail, rabbits live in underground burrows. Their babies are born hairless and blind after a gestation period of about 30 days. Hares don’t live in burrows and their young, called “leverets,” are born after a gestation period of 42 days, with eyes open and full coats of hair. They are able to run soon after birth and will breed during their second summer. Most live only three to five years.
The North is home to two hare species—the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) and the arctic hare (Lepus arcticus). Both are masters of camouflage. Their coats are white in winter, changing to mottled patterns in the spring and fall to match the patches of snow. In summer, the snowshoe hare is brownish with white legs, while the arctic hare is grey with black edges on its ears and a whitish underside. Both are nocturnal or more active in low light.
Snowshoe hares live in the boreal forest and are very shy, tending to hide in thick undergrowth. At 40 to 50 centimetres in length and weighing 1.2 to 1.6 kilograms, they are considerably smaller than arctic hares. Their feet, however, are proportionally larger, well-furred and very flexible, which permits them to travel efficiently on top of the soft snow of the forest.
Snowshoe hares undergo cycles of low and high population, which have been reported in the records of fur-trading companies for well over 200 years. The cycles usually run over 10 years, in which there may be only a few hares per hectare in the low portion and more than 800 in the high portion. These hare cycles affect predators like foxes, great horned owls, gyrfalcons and northern goshawks, whose population cycles usually lag a year behind the hares. Lynx populations are tied especially closely to snowshoe hare cycles, dropping to almost nothing when hares are few.
A close relative of the snowshoe hare, the arctic hare is larger, measuring 40 to 70 centimetres long and weighing between three and seven kilograms. Going into the winter, some 20 per cent of their body weight is fat. They also eat small woody plants, but in most areas, some 90 per cent of their diet is Arctic willow, though they eat berries, herbaceous plants and some mosses in summer. They will also eat meat and fish if they can find it.
Due to their long hind legs and specialized tendon attachments, arctic hares are speedy and capable of bursts of up to 64 kph as well as extremely fast dodges, turns and extended leaps. Arctic hares also can hop for long distances on their hind legs, much like kangaroos.
In extreme cold, arctic hares contract into a resting posture, pulling their hind feet under their bodies, tucking their tails, and placing their front feet on top of the hind feet, ears pressed close to their backs, and heads lowered. They usually rest in the lee of a rock or bank. Hares will dig burrows in snowdrifts during storms, but usually don’t use these to escape predators.
In the High Arctic, arctic hares remain white all summer. They also tend to congregate in large groups, sometimes exceeding 100 animals. This probably helps them deal with wolf predation as it is a technique used by many animals to confuse predators.
Recent research shows that tagged arctic hares on Ellesmere Island migrate in winter, in some cases more than 200 kilometres. About 84 per cent of the local population does this, possibly to utilize terrain that has not been previously grazed. They return to their original home ranges in summer. One particularly diligent marked hare recorded a migration journey of 388 kilometres.
I doubt the arctic hares in southern Nunavut undergo such long migrations, as there is more vegetation available throughout the winter. Regardless, they are a common sight. In Nunavut communities, they shelter under buildings and quickly lose their fear of passing people.
I recall a summer evening in Rankin Inlet. As I walked my dog along the beach, I noticed movement ahead. We froze, waited. The grasses parted, and an arctic hare poked her head out. We remained motionless. The hare hopped closer. I shot photos. She was beautiful: soft fur shading from light to dark grey, white along her legs, black on her ears, vibrant cinnamon brown eyes and a twitching nose. She spotted us, sat up, then executed a graceful turn and vanished into the grass. We encountered this hare so often that summer that she earned the name “Harriet.”
When ya gotta eat…
Hares, both snowshoe and arctic, practice “coprophagy,” meaning they eat their own feces. They mostly feed on small twigs, willow, birch, poplar, juniper, conifer needles, a bit of moss and some lichens. These are foods of low nutritional value, and coprophagy enables the hares to pass material through their digestive tract twice. They have an intestinal sac called a caecum, and the reingested fecal pellets (mostly soft pellets produced and consumed during the night) go into this sac and are re-exposed to the intestinal flora—a second try, so to speak.
On an environmental baseline project in Nunavut, between the Coppermine and Hood rivers, we observed a feature of hare feces that I have never seen reported in the literature. We found many hare scats below a series of large snowbanks. Some were coated with a layer of clay about two millimetres thick; these were grey and quite smooth. When we opened them, we found each pellet had formed around a small pebble. I saved the scats and, should any keen hare researcher want them for analysis, I can send them.