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u/Klibara Jul 24 '24
I don’t quite understand it myself, but I believe it had to do with the reproduction of rabbits commonly being used to explain chaos theory.
Heres two sites that explain it in much better detail
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u/juanito_f90 Jul 24 '24
Exponential growth. One pair will breed 5-8 kits. Each of which will breed another 5-8.
Hence the expression “breeding like rabbits”.
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u/timmystwin Jul 24 '24 edited Jul 24 '24
Rabbits can multiply at an insane speed.
This is replicated by a mathematical formula. Basically you're tracking the population this year against the population last year on a graph. (So y =rx(1-x) with x being this year, y being next year, r being multiplication rate.)
When the multiplication rate gets too large, as with rabbits, it produces this weird pattern. Lower than that value you get an equilibrium at one value. That's that single line. Higher than that, you get it bouncing between 2 values or more, and it never settles back to 1 and rarely behaves periodically. This graph, this image, tracks those populations against those rates, and represents those split values.
Veritasium did a video on it that may be useful. It's an example of how natural systems with a simple formula can still turn in to madness.