Mexican Cottontail

The Mexican cottontail (Sylvilagus cunicularius) is a species of cottontail rabbit that is endemic to southern Mexico. Its natural habitats are temperate forests, subtropical or tropical dry forests and pastureland. == Taxonomy and evolution == The Mexican cottontail was first described by the English naturalist George Robert Waterhouse in 1848 as part of his work in classifying specimens in the collection of the museum of the Zoological Society of London. In his account, Waterhouse gave a very brief description compared to those of other species, noted that the specimen was from a population in Mexico (which was given as its type locality), and stated that its scientific name, Lepus cunicularius, was attributed to the German zoologist Hinrich Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein had written in 1830 about the Mexican cottontail very briefly, stating that the species described as Lepus cunicularius was a burrowing rabbit that differed from European rabbits in size, color, and proportions, and could be named the "white-breasted rabbit" (weifsbrüstige Kaninchen). Mammalogist Marcus Ward Lyon Jr. gave the Mexican cottontail its current genus, Sylvilagus, in 1904, though he provided only the names Sylvilagus insolitus and Sylvilagus veraecrucis, the former of which was clarified to be a subspecies of the latter, as…