quote:
Originally posted by dance girl:
Hmmmm, Fred: they are all rabbits or to be more specific..
Leporidae..
No, they are not all rabbits ! They are all
hares.Their closest relative would be the European hare
lepus europaeus, not the true rabbit
oryctilagus cuniculus .
Bugs Bunny, in spite of the name (bunny is a diminutive of bun, an old word in English for a rabbit), is modelled on the North American Jackrabbit which is a
lepus (lepus californicus is the Black-tailed and lepus townsendii the White-tailed Jackrabbit) . His film company often used the word hare in punning titles for his films and his first film , in 1938, was
Porky's Hare Hunt. We may doubt whether the company was as conscious of biology as it was of the punning potential of 'hare' against 'rabbit' or 'bunny'
Brer Rabbit is another hare, based on the Jackrabbit.The stories originate in tales told by African American slaves, which told of the hare being more wily than the fox.These are the stories that Robert Roosevelt retold. The Uncle Remus stories transcribed by Joel Chandler Harris are based on these tales.
The Easter Bunny is a modern American commercial invention,the sanitisation of something rather harder to sell, but originating back in Europe. It is the hare as a symbol of fertility and rebirth and which the Saxons held sacred to their goddess Eostre, the goddess of Spring (hence, incidentally, our word Easter ).The hare has long associations in mythology.
Nobody would think to associate the true rabbit with cunning. It is a simple-minded animal but very good at reproduction. That is just as well, because it needs to breed fast to make up the losses it suffers from being such easy meat.
It's fast only over a hundred metres or less, runs dead straight when pursued and has to make it to a burrow to escape.It shows absolutely no originality.
The hare, on the other hand, knows enough to have worked out the advantage of surprise. A young hare may lie flat on the ground, relying on its camouflage, until you almost tread on it.Young or old, escaping it is off like the wind (a hare can run at nearly 50 mph), pursued perhaps by your startled dog, who needs to be of a greyhound type to get close. The dog does well to catch it (and rarely does), because the animal zig-zags as soon as the dog's nose is almost on it, and repeats the change of tack when the dog gets close again. It has great endurance, is a good swimmer, and can jump about 8 feet.
Its females show more intelligence than female rabbits do, too. The 'mad March hares', that we see boxing with others, are not males fighting for females, but females boxing the ears of unwanted suitors
We didn't have rabbits in England until the Romans turned up and brought them in. The first ones suffered under our climate but natural selection soon cured that defect, more's the pity. However, without them our foxes would not have such a good time as they provide an easy and abundant food-supply. The hare was always here.
OK Fred I'm trying to get inside your mind here, because there could be a lot of right answers to this 
