strange rigging disfiguration (Likely blender scrub mistake)

as the title says, I’m having some real problems with my rig that makes moving the legs of the character very unrealistic, if not impossible due to the way that the rigging focuses on only the top half of the skin, i have a feeling that this is going to be a VERY simple fix and I’ve not payed attention to a minor detail in the process but i guess i’ll never know if i don’t ask.

when i try to move any of the bones which are tied to the legs, the movement doesn’t deform the section of the model that the armature’s associated with, instead the whole leg that the bone is based inside of moves with it, by checking the heat settings of the bones, it doesn’t seem like there should be anything wrong. but then again, i only have a very basic knowledge of blender so this could very well be wrong.

Thanks, and find the blender file that i’m currently working on below

rabbit ears blender.blend (857 KB)