In North America, rabbits are solitary animals that do not exhibit cooperation or territorial defense, traits commonly found in domesticated species. Domestication requires species with flexible diets, tolerance for captivity, and social structures enabling group living. New World rabbits lack these characteristics, so they were never ideal candidates for domestication. Moreover, rabbits in the New World were less abundant and more scattered than their Old World counterparts, making large-scale domestication even more challenging. As a result, native Americans never adopted rabbits as a food source or for any other purposes in contrast to the history of rabbit domestication in Europe and Asia.