Word: lockley
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Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail had their moments of mischief, but they were generally gentle, carefree and lovable little creatures. In fact, they possessed most of the virtues that real rabbits do not have. For, says Naturalist Ronald M. Lockley in Britain's New Scientist, rabbits are usually unhappy and just as mean as they can manage...
...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...
...students, it all seemed something of a lark at first-six expense-paid weeks in sunny Southern California. But last week, as one by one they marched up to receive their graduation certificates, Dean Lockley happily noted that they all looked "five years older . . . We have tried," said he, "to turn out men who can think...