In fact they've been known to cannibalise each other. Well, that famous variant on the Fibonacci sequence, known as the Lucas sequence, can be used to model this. It goes 2 1 3 4 7 11 18 29 47 76 and so on, but like Fibonacci adding each successive two numbers to get the next.
For our rabbits this means start with 2 pairs and one eats the other, so now only 1. However that 1 then gives birth to 3. Of those 3, 1 gives birth to 2, but the other 2 don't give birth yet, so now we have 4. Next the 2 that didn't give birth last time now give birth to 3 each, while of the remaining 2, one eats the other, leaving us with a total of 7. And so on.
In fact they've been known to cannibalise each other. Well, that famous variant on the Fibonacci sequence, known as the Lucas sequence, can be used to model this. It goes 2 1 3 4 7 11 18 29 47 76 and so on, but like Fibonacci adding each successive two numbers to get the next.
For our rabbits this means start with 2 pairs and one eats the other, so now only 1. However that 1 then gives birth to 3. Of those 3, 1 gives birth to 2, but the other 2 don't give birth yet, so now we have 4. Next the 2 that didn't give birth last time now give birth to 3 each, while of the remaining 2, one eats the other, leaving us with a total of 7. And so on.