Unhoused

[Hares'] speed, camouflage, lack of family life and even size are linked as adaptations to their principal behavioural difference from the rabbit, namely, the fact that they do not burrow. Though there are exceptions to this rule, with certain desert-dwelling hares using or extending the burrows of other animals to escape the sun, and with mountain hares occasionally using short burrows to escape predation from above, most hares make do instead with a 'form' or resting place which consists of only a narrow scrape on the surface of the earth. As a result of this, or an intimate parallel connection to being 'unhoused' or unprotected, hares are extremely precocial.* For whereas rabbits, like most small mammals, are born blind and naked in a prepared 'nest,' leverets are born fully furred, able to see, and able to move about soon after birth. . . . Whereas the rabbit is a large small animal, the hare has developed in ways more consistent with being a small large one.

– Simon Carnell
Hare
p. 61

* precocial – adjective. An animal species active and able to move freely from birth or hatching and requiring little parental care ( opposed to altricial).