Why Have There Been So Many Dead Rabbits on Campus Lately? 

WARNING: This story contains graphic depictions of dead animals. 

In the month of September, three dead rabbits have been found on campus paths and roads. I found two of them myself. The first one was on the paved path that leads down to the Paran Creek Apartments. It was one day after I arrived back on campus. The rabbit had no head, but the body was clean. Its entrails splayed onto the sidewalk. They looked like they were made of plastic. 

A little over a week later, a friend of mine found another one on the grass path to Jennings. “It didn’t look like it had just died,” she remembered. “It’s head wasn’t visible. Like it was either gone or tucked under its body.” 

Then, only two days after that, I found one more. It was in the middle of the road just before the pass through the gate as you head out of campus. One patch of skin was cleanly removed on its hind thigh. There weren’t any tire tracks.

It was easy to speculate, of course. My mind was awash with images of evil taxidermists and occult students. But I wanted real answers, and so I made an appointment to talk with Bennington biology professor Blake Jones.

Before he looked at the photos, Jones gave me some exposition. “Rabbits have the benefit of breeding often and a lot,” he explained. “But that is compounded by high young mortality.” 

Rabbits breed from spring into the summer, he told me, often having multiple litters. They give very little parental care to their young. Young rabbits spend the vast majority of their time alone, huddling together in dips in the ground, surrounded by tall grasses. At set times during the day, their mother will come, nurse them, and then immediately leave. “Here we are, mid-late September,” Jones continued. “In fall, we get this influx of young dumb rabbits who don’t really know how the world works. They’re out on their own, learning from the get-go, and they haven’t received any social transmission of information that other mammals do.” I showed him the photos.

Rabbit #1

Location: Path to Paran Creek

Date: September 2, 2024

Jones’ Analysis: “What this looks like to me is that something killed the rabbit, or found the dead rabbit, took the head, and most of the visceral organs that are good. So a predator is going to eat the liver, and the heart, and the lungs. And it’s not going to eat the colon, because it’s filled with waste. It’s not a shock that a large predator—so a fox, or a coyote, or even a raccoon—would take the head. Because the brain is very nutritious. It’s very fatty.”

Rabbit #2

Location: Path to Jennings

Date: September 13, 2024 

Jones’ Analysis: “This looks like predation by something that is relatively small. Something that is more slowly eating into the body cavity. My best guess would be this died from who knows what—probably not a large predator—because I would expect to end up more consumed—and this looks to me to be something older. So I’m sure that there’s been, regardless or what killed it, multiple small animals feeding on it—insects as well. I’m sure flies have already laid their eggs in it already, and probably maggots [are] in it already.”

Rabbit #3

Location: Road exiting campus

Date: September 15, 2024

Jones’ Analysis: “This looks like a rabbit was hit by a car. It was drug on the pavement for a certain amount, [which] pulls the skin away from the connective tissue that holds it onto the muscle. And so this would be very common to see—probably the cranial cavity was squished under a tire, and that pressure erupted. And so that really looks like a vehicle.”

In the end, a major predator, a car collision, and an undetermined cause of death followed by some scavenging are nothing out of the ordinary at all. “This time of year, there are a lot of young rabbits,” Jones reiterated. “This would be strange if we knew there are three dead rabbits on Bennington campus that are all on a path,” Jones continued. “But what we don’t know is, maybe there are actually twenty dead rabbits on campus. And so, not a surprise that three of them ended up where people walk.” 

Now, Jones made sure to stress that these are only his best guesses. “Who knows exactly what happened,” he said. “Some of these could be compound things.” For example, a rabbit could have died somewhere else and then been moved onto the path by a human. “But,” he said. “I’m not surprised that there are dead rabbits around in September.” 

When one comes across a bunch of dead, disembowled rabbits, there’s a desire for an explanation, and a sense that this must just be an aberration with a specific, limited cause. But it’s really just business as usual—the same old casualties that happen every year around this time. “It’s an unfortunately gruesome part of the fall,” Jones said. And in a way, that’s the darkest explanation of all.

Perhaps these encounters should serve as a reminder of the brutality of the animal world. “Most people probably don’t realize that life is hard for rabbits,” Jones said. “‘Really? So many die in the fall?’ So being aware of that is kind of—helpful. I kind of feel better that I know a little bit about how the world works around me.”