Venezuelan lowland rabbit

The Venezuelan lowland rabbit, Sylvilagus varynaensis, known in Spanish as conejo de monte or conejo de Barinas, is a cottontail rabbit found in western Venezuela. It is the largest of the rabbits within its limited distribution, with buff and reddish fur, and it eats plants, mainly from the genera Sida and Malvastrum. It is closely related to the common tapeti, which is smaller and more widely distributed. Pedro Durant and Manuel Guevara first described it in 2001, noting that it had much larger body measurements than the regional common tapeti and shorter tails than local eastern cottontails; the holotype is a female collected in 1989 at Fundo Millano in Barinas and kept at the University of the Andes in Merida. Margays, crab-eating foxes, falcons and owls prey on it. The IUCN classifies it as data deficient because little is known about its populations and much of the material used to describe it is held privately.