Word: lockley
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...wild rabbits of Britain dig labyrinthine warrens and are hard to study intensively when at large. So Lockley surrounded two one-acre plots of grassy land in Wales with fences, put male and female rabbits in the enclosures and let nature take its course. In one plot, called the Intensive Pen, he put six bucks and six does. Grazing was plentiful and most predators were excluded, but multiplication was not rapid. During the first season the rabbit population barely doubled...
...Lockley marked his rabbits with numbers and kept track of all their doings. Soon he found that they followed rigid social customs that had the effect of holding the population down. At the head of a rabbit hierarchy is a muscular, middle-aged "queen doe" who occupies the best burrow in the center of the warren. She permits some of them to shelter in the warren, but when does of lower rank have their young, she forces them to dig small nest holes in distant parts of the enclosure, where they are exposed to predators and inclement weather...
King Buck. The queen doe of a warren is always mated to the king buck. Every evening he comes out of his quarters in the warren's best apartment and struts around, chasing lesser bucks and does out of his path. His arrogance is most unpleasant, but Lockley believes it is an advantage to rabbit society. The lesser rabbits seldom oppose the king, and his dominance keeps fighting to a minimum...
...second enclosure, the Extensive Pen, Lockley put a single buck and two does. With a whole acre of grass and a buck to share between them, the does responded reproductively as rabbits are expected to do. Between December and the following July, they produced 36 young. But even this two-Eve Eden was not happy. "The isolated buck in the Extensive Pen," says Lockley, "although enjoying two wives without competition, nevertheless spent most of his time patrolling the fence between the two pens, endeavoring to break into the Intensive Pen, where he could see other males and females. These males...
Death of Chagrin. The defeated male had been king buck in his own enclosure, so Lockley put him back again to see what would happen. Alas, he found no happiness. Says Lockley: "He found the next dominant buck in the hierarchy in possession of both wife and warren. The physical and psychological effects of being beaten in strange territory were evidently still with him, for as he approached his old home, he moved uncertainly. When the secondary buck rushed to attack, the old king put up a feeble defense, and at last ran away, badly bitten, to die-less...