Hare
See text
Hares and jackrabbits are leporids belonging to the genus Lepus. A hare less than one year old is called a leveret. Four species commonly known as types of hare are classified outside of Lepus: the hispid hare (Caprolagus hispidus), and three species known as red rock hares (Pronolagus spp.).
Hares are very fast-moving animals; the European brown hare (Lepus europaeus) is able to run at speeds of up to 72 km/h (45 mph). They live solitarily or in pairs, while a "drove" is the collective noun for a group of hares.
A common type of hare in Arctic North America is the snowshoe hare, replaced farther south by the black-tailed jackrabbit, white-tailed jackrabbit, and other species.
Normally a shy animal, the European brown hare changes its behavior in spring, when hares can be seen in broad daylight chasing one another around meadows; this appears to be competition between males to attain dominance (and hence more access to breeding females). During this spring frenzy, hares can be seen "boxing"; one hare striking another with its paws (probably the origin of the term "mad as a March hare"). For a long time, this had been thought to be intermale competition, but closer observation has revealed it is usually a female hitting a male to prevent copulation.
Read more about Hare: Differences From Rabbits, Classification, As Food, Folklore and Mythology, Place Names
Famous quotes containing the word hare:
“The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts.”
—David Hare (b. 1947)
“We watched her jug a hare, once, on television, years ago.... The hare had been half rotted, then cremated, then consumed. If there is a god and she is of the rabbit family, then Saskia will be in deep doo- doo on Judgment Day.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot see a chicken’s neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)