The Madness of Hares

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If you see a leveret alone in a form, leave it alone, since its mother is almost certainly waiting nearby for you to leave. There are two types of British hare, commonly called the brown and the blue. The brown hare is the more common, and is found in most areas of Britain, apart from mountainous districts.

Its coat is sandy-brown on the upper part, turning to white underneath. An adult weighs between three and five kilos. The blue hare, often called the mountain hare, is much smaller, weighing a little under three kilos. It is also one of the few British mammals to change its coat in winter.

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Its normal colour is a greyish blue with some brown, but at the autumn moult its coat changes to white. Hares are somewhat solitary creatures, preferring isolation to the large populations that rabbits achieve in their warrens. And although the female is known to become pregnant at any time of the year, mating normally takes place in the spring. Thanks to its breeding habits, the rabbit is far more numerous in Britain than the hare. The young, up to six at a time, are born into the security of a fur-lined burrow after a gestation of 28 days. And within 24 hours, the mother is ready to conceive again.

This phenomenal ability to reproduce is normally kept in check by populations of predators — foxes, stoats, weasels and birds of prey. In the absence of these, rabbits can overrun even an entire continent, as happened in Australia. Rabbits are extremely timid — they have to be, because they are virtually defenceless. They come out to feed in early morning or in the early evening, straying no farther from the warren than is absolutely necessary.

They are constantly on the look-out for danger. If one senses trouble, it thumps its hind legs on the ground and the rest of the rabbits scamper back to safety. One rabbit nibbling at a patch of grass is one thing, but thousands ruining entire crops is another. By the s, rabbits had become such a pest in Australia that the disease of myxomatosis was introduced to control them. Later it was introduced into other countries, including some in Europe.

The disease soon spread to others. Myxomatosis is a horrific disease, spread by fleas, which decimated rabbit populations. At one time, the sight of an infected rabbit, its face hugely swollen, tottering and about to die, was all too common. Now the appearance of myxomatosis-resistant strains of rabbit has been noted, and new methods of control will have to be found.

Litter sizes decrease as the breeding season draws to a close with no pregnancies occurring after August. The testes of males begin to regress and sperm production ends in September.

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Does give birth in hollow depressions in the ground. An individual female may have three litters in a year with a to day gestation period. The young have an average weigh of around grams 4. Their mother visits them for nursing soon after sunset; the young suckle for around five minutes, urinating while they do so, with the doe licking up the fluid.

March hare madness: Country diary years ago | Environment | The Guardian

She then leaps away so as not to leave an olfactory trail, and the leverets disperse once more. European hares are large leporids and adults can only be tackled by large predators such as canids , felids and the largest birds of prey. European hares have both external and internal parasites. They were also found to host rabbit fleas Spilopsyllus cuniculi , stickfast fleas Echidnophaga myrmecobii , lice Haemodipsus setoni and H. European brown hare syndrome EBHS is a disease caused by a calicivirus similar to that causing rabbit haemorrhagic disease RHS and can similarly be fatal, but cross infection between the two mammal species does not occur.

In October , it was reported that a mutated form of the myxomatosis virus may have jumped to hares in the UK. Normally rare in hares, a significant die-off from the virus has also occurred in Spain. In Europe, the hare has been a symbol of sex and fertility since at least Ancient Greece. The Greeks associated it with the gods Dionysus , Aphrodite and Artemis as well as with satyrs and cupids.

The Christian Church connected the hare with lustfulness and homosexuality, but also associated it with the persecution of the church because of the way it was commonly hunted. In Northern Europe, Easter imagery often involves hares or rabbits. Billson cites folk customs involving the hare around Easter in Northern Europe, and argues that the hare was probably a sacred animal in prehistoric Britain's festival of springtime.

John Andrew Boyle cites an etymology dictionary by A. Boyle adds that "when the authors speak of the hare as the 'companion of Aphrodite and of satyrs and cupids' and 'in the Middle Ages [the hare] appears beside the figure of [mythological] Luxuria', they are on much surer ground. The hare is a character in some fables, such as The Tortoise and the Hare of Aesop. Across Europe, over five million European hares are shot each year, making it probably the most important game mammal on the continent.

European hare

This popularity has threatened regional varieties such as those of France and Denmark, through large-scale importing of hares from Eastern European countries such as Hungary. In beagling, the hare is hunted with a pack of small hunting dogs, beagles , followed by the human hunters on foot. In Britain, the Hunting Act banned hunting of hares with dogs, so the 60 beagle packs now use artificial "trails", or may legally continue to hunt rabbits.

Hare is traditionally cooked by jugging: It is traditionally served with or briefly cooked with the hare's blood and port wine. Young hares can be roasted; the meat of older hares becomes too tough for roasting, and may be slow-cooked. The European hare has a wide range across Europe and western Asia and has been introduced to a number of other countries around the globe, often as a game species. In general it is considered moderately abundant in its native range, [13] but declines in populations have been noted in many areas since the s. These have been associated with the intensification of agricultural practices.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has evaluated the European hare's conservation status as being of least concern. However, at low population densities, hares are vulnerable to local extinctions as the available gene pool declines, making inbreeding more likely. This is the case in northern Spain and in Greece, where the restocking by hares brought from outside the region has been identified as a threat to regional gene pools. To counteract this, a captive breeding program has been implemented in Spain, and the relocation of some individuals from one location to another has increased genetic variety.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A large species of hare native to Europe and parts of Asiae. Lepus europaeus caspicus L. Hares fighting above and running during "March madness". Retrieved 23 December Retrieved 15 September Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference 3rd ed. Johns Hopkins University Press. Rabbits, Hares and Pikas: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan. Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research.

100 years ago: March hare madness

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European Journal of Wildlife Research. Journal of Wildlife Management. Retrieved 31 August Evolution, Ecology, and Conservation. The Rosen Publishing Group. Canadian Journal of Zoology. Mastication, gut passage, and digestibility". Retrieved 11 May The Natural History of Canadian Mammals. University of Toronto Press. Implications for farmland management". Journal of Applied Ecology.

A picky herbivore searching for plant parts rich in fat". Effects of resource distribution and social status". The New Encyclopedia of Mammals. Mammals of the Great Lakes Region.

University of Michigan Press. Retrieved 7 September Origins of English History. Archived from the original on 8 February Retrieved 11 September Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. A Review Article" as published in Folklore , Vol. Retrieved 10 September A Historical and Comparative Study. Association of Masters of Harriers and Beagles.

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