The Science Behind The Easter Bunny

posted in: Learn, The Science Behind | 5

The Easter bunny has been one of most iconic symbols of Easter for hundreds of years and the idea hasn’t changed much in that time. In most all cases the Easter Bunny hops around on Easter laying colored hard-boiled eggs or artificial ones filled with candy or money. But how feasible is this?

So far no known species of rabbits lay eggs, but there are an estimated 6.6 million undiscovered species. Out of the 6.6 million species however, most of them are plants and microorganisms, but there are a few hundred estimated species of mammals that are undiscovered. Out of over 5,000 mammal species, 5 lay eggs. So, a very large platypus-rabbit-potentially human hybrid could pull that off.

Secondly, the Easter bunny originated in Germany, this means that countries with German or British roots have an Easter bunny. These countries include The United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, The United States, New Zealand, and Australia. In those countries the combined population of children under 14 is roughly 96,710,000. In the UK the average number of eggs given to each child is 8.8. If we use this data for all the other countries, the Easter Bunny lays 851,048,000 Easter eggs each year.

Considering the time change, the Easter Bunny would have 36 hours to lay all 851,048,000 eggs. That’s 23,640,000 eggs per hour, 394,000 eggs per minute, or 6,566 eggs per second. The average population density of the countries previously listed is 92.5 people per square kilometer. If we take this number and multiply it by the average percentage of children in the population (17%), we get an average of 16 children per sq. km. This means to deliver eggs to all 96,710,000 kids, the Easter Bunny would have to hop around 6,044,375 km (considering the circumference of the earth is 40,000 km, the Easter bunny could hop around the world 150 times). That’s 167,900 km per hour! The fastest rabbits can run at 72 km/h. At 167,900 km/h the Easter Bunny would out race even the fastest manmade object, the New Horizons Probe at 58,536 km/h.

To calculate the force on the Easter Bunny we need find the total mass of the eggs. The average hard-boiled egg has a mass between 50 – 75 grams. Since the Easter bunny is pretty big the eggs are probably on the larger side. At 75 grams a piece 851,048,000 eggs would weigh 63,763,600,000 grams or 63,763,600 kilos. With an acceleration rate of 0 to 167,900 km/h in 1 second, the acceleration is 46,639 meters per second per second. With this we can now calculate force. Since force equal mass times acceleration, our force would be 2,973,870,540,400 N. This is an immense amount of force (the space shuttle has 3,900,000 N at launch).

G-force = force (N) divided by mass (63,763,600 kilos). This means the Easter Bunny would be under 46,639 G’s! I’m not sure how many G’s a bunny can take, but humans can take 178 G’s max. Finally as many of you who have guess if you read my scientific analysis of Santa, the Easter Bunny would most likely catch on fire in a fiery ball of flames from air resistance.

In conclusion, if some new Giant, Colored Hard-Boiled Egg Laying, Rabbit-Platypus-Rodent was discovered who could travel at super fast record breaking speeds and had some sort of natural heat shield, then yes our eggs would be delivered just as we have heard since we were little kids.

5 Responses

  1. Jade (upandatom)

    Hahaha nice read! Reminds me a lot of your Santa one which was also a crack up 🙂

  2. Chase Wiley

    Yeah, hopefully next year. Easter snuck up on me!

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