The brown nape on the back of the head is a smaller size from than that of the Snowshoe Hare, helping to distinguish the two separate species from each other.

Additionally, contrasting with the Snowshoe Hare’s long hops, the mountain cottontails take short distinctive leaps.

[4] Aside from geographical confinement, the mountain cottontail survives in a large range of elevations under 6000 feet[5] and the landscape in which it resides differs in legislation.

[3] Mountain cottontail diet is primarily made up of sagebrush and varies toward grasses during the spring and summer seasons.

[6] It is made up in large part of grasses such as wheatgrasses, needle-and-thread, Indian ricegrass, cheatgrass brome, bluegrasses, and bottlebrush squirreltail.

[6] As food sources becomes more limited in the winter months the diet may turn to more woody plant parts such as bark and twigs.

They are not a social species and spend the largest quantity of time performing non-social behavior, but congregations occur on popular feeding grounds.

The only behavior to reduce predation is limiting active time to dusk and dawn, and the semicircular path they hop when chased.