 Lanes argued that this view of the female rabbits came from Adams himself rather than his source text , Ronald Lockley 's The Private Life of the Rabbit . In Lockley 's text , by contrast , the rabbit world is matriarchal , and new warrens are always initiated by dissatisfied , young females . Hence , Lanes concluded , Adams 's novel is " marred by an attitude towards females that finds more confirmation in Hugh Hefner 's Playboy than R. M. Lockley 's The Private Life of the Rabbit . " 
