What is a cottontail thinking?
Absolutely still. You cannot see it. It is working.
Freezing is the first line of defence, not a failure of nerve. A still rabbit against grass is genuinely difficult for a predator to pick out, and moving early would hand over the one advantage it has.
The sprint is the backup. A cottontail runs in a zigzag rather than a straight line, which costs it speed but makes it far harder to track — and it will only spend that option once the stillness has clearly stopped working.
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