A few things I've learned about rabbits and hares

While working on the Useful Calendar, I try to learn as much as I can about the featured animal, which I choose based on the Chinese luni-solar calendar and zodiac. The Year of the Rabbit begins on Jan. 22, 2023, and so I have been immersed in many things rabbit for the last several months.

Naturally, I began by trying to find out what species of rabbits are native to China so I could choose a proper representative for the year. Instead, I learned that there are no rabbits native to China, only hares. That's why the leaping leporid* that graces January in my Year of the Rabbit calendar card is really a hare: Lepus sinensis, the Chinese hare, to be exact. (*Leporid means any rabbit or hare.)

Even though we casually use the words rabbit, hare, and bunny interchangeably, rabbits and hares are distinctly different animals—and bunny is just a nickname often used for rabbits. Both belong to the family Lagomorph, which also includes the pika, an adorable small mammal that is native both to China and North America, and resembles a rabbit in some ways, but has short rounded ears and other distinctions. I did not include any pikas in the 2023 Useful Calendar, but I do plan to include them in the upcoming 2023 Annual: The Rabbit Zine. (And, no, if you're wondering, the pika is not the model for the Pokemon character Pikachu, despite the name, which is apparently coincidental.)

The Chinese zodiac was developed more than 2,000 years ago, in the 5th century BCE, as a way for an illiterate population to keep track of days, months and years. there were definitely no actual rabbits in China at that time. All rabbits in China today are fairly recent descendants of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). 

The European rabbit is the species of all domesticated rabbits, whether for pets, food, fur, or talismans. I remember one time when I was a kid and brought home a lucky rabbit's foot that I had bought with my allowance, thinking it to be the coolest thing, and so soft! My mother eyed it with barely disguised horror at the grotesquery that my little relic really was, and my father said, "It wasn't very lucky for the rabbit, was it?" That certainly gave me something to think about.

In the wild, this is the rabbit species known for its burrowing habit, creating a network of underground tunnels that are extended over generations—a literal rabbit warren. Other species of rabbits, such as the cottontails native to the Americas, will dig shallow depressions for nests, called forms, but are not known for tunneling like the European rabbit.

Rabbits and hares are really fast runners and capable of zig-zagging as they run to evade capture by predators. Depending on which sources you check (and which species of hare), hares can run from 35 mph to 45 mph. Even the eastern cottontail rabbit, which is a lot smaller than a hare, can run 18 mph, and make hairpin turns while doing it. I remember my father describing how, when he was a boy, his dog would be chasing a rabbit at full speed, and suddenly the rabbit would change directions and the dog would wipe out trying to make the same turn. 

The main distinctions between rabbits and hares are that hares are generally bigger, lankier and have longer legs and ears than rabbits; baby hares are called leverets and are born fully furred, eyes open, and ready to run, whereas baby rabbits, called kits, are born naked and blind.  

Jackrabbits are really American hares, so-called because their long ears resemble those of a mule, or jackass. Belgian hares are really a breed of domesticated European rabbit developed to resemble a hare.

Now that the calendar is done and the holiday bustle largely behind me, I look forward to going through my notes, finishing the book about rabbits that I started to read, and returning to the websites and online articles I've bookmarked for "later," to write about the most interesting bits for my rabbit zine.