"The Legend of the Moon Hare"
- There are 12 animals in the zodiac row and among them is a rabbit. Why was he in this line?
- It must be said right away that next year is not so much the year of the Rabbit, but, in fact, the year of the Hare.
Because we have an eastern calendar, and there are no real wild rabbits in China.
Therefore, it is better to talk about rabbits and hares.
I think it has to do with the legends of the Moon Hare.
If you look at the full Moon, then from the dark spots located on it, which are called the Lunar Seas, a silhouette is formed that looks like a hare.
In China, there is an ancient legend (it has several thousand years) about the Moon Hare, who crushes the elixir of immortality in a jade mortar.
There are even several variations of this legend.
Apparently, this determined the popularity of the hare in ancient China; it was included in the eastern calendar.
The hare represents one of the years of the 12-year cycle.
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"Conquered the whole world"
- How common are rabbits around the world and where is their homeland?
- Rabbits before their close relationship with humans had a very small area of distribution.
They lived only on the Iberian Peninsula, on the territory of modern Spain.
But they were very fond of the Romans and other peoples who lived in Antiquity.
Rabbits were valued primarily, of course, as hunting prey.
Then already as animals, which could not only be mined in nature, but also bred.
Even in Antiquity, they began to breed throughout the Roman Empire.
At the same time, rabbits came to the British Isles, where they are still very popular.
In England, they live almost everywhere, in London, for example, right in the parks.
After that, the British brought rabbits to Australia.
We can say that a person is a friend of a rabbit.
Now, thanks to man, rabbits have conquered the whole world.
Somewhere they live in the wild, and somewhere - as animals that are bred by man.
- Where in Russia can you find a rabbit in nature?
- In Russia, in the Krasnodar Territory, in some places they have taken root.
But in Russia they began to settle rabbits only towards the end of the 20th century.
As a rule, rabbits are specially settled in those places where they believe that they will be fine.
And they can actually survive on waste lands: in wastelands, among ravines, where you can’t sow wheat, where it’s hard to graze cattle.
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"Hares and rabbits are the closest relatives"
How are hares different from rabbits? And how are they similar?
Hares and rabbits are the closest relatives.
They belong to the order of lagomorphs, which is very close to rodents.
The first difference between rabbits and hares is that rabbits live in burrows, and hares, as a rule, run freely and rest wherever they can.
There are hares that can arrange a lair for themselves to rest.
For example, a white hare can dig holes in the snow.
But of all the hares and their closest relatives, only rabbits have learned to dig really deep holes.
People know about rabbit holes from Carroll's fairy tale "Alice in Wonderland", where the main character falls after the rabbit into just such a hole.
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- That is, the Russian fairy tale about the fact that the hare had a bast hut, and the fox had an ice hut - is this not true? Does the hare really have a home?
- The hare can make a house for himself, but it will be more like an ice house.
Because it is in the snow that a hare can dig its own lair.
Brown hares, who live mainly in the steppes, can also make a small mink for themselves somewhere under a bush.
But rabbits are the right animals in this respect, which can arrange a home for themselves, reliably protecting them from any predators.
This is the main difference between a hare and a rabbit.
In addition, rabbits are the only lagomorphs that have been domesticated by humans.
Another difference is related to the way of life of these animals.
Immediately after birth, the hare is sighted, with fur, with ears.
Moreover, the first born hare can immediately run away from the hare mother and hide in the grass while his brothers and sisters are born.
Then, the next day, the mother of this hare finds by smell.
She visits him literally once or twice a day to feed him.
In a few minutes, she injects him with a large portion of very fatty milk.
And during the day, the hare digests this milk and grows.
In fact, a hare is a miniature hare.
The baby rabbit is born completely naked, blind, miserable, completely unlike an adult rabbit.
But he, however, grows very quickly, and after a few days he has a coat and opens his eyes.
If you look at an adult animal, then, as a rule, rabbits are shorter in comparison with hares and have shorter legs.
Rabbits do not need to develop great speed, running away from predators, like hares.
Usually rabbits try not to go far from their holes and feed somewhere in the neighborhood.
And if there is danger, then the main thing for them is to run to the hole.
And then they already have a very complex branched system of holes in which you can hide.
- It turns out that the main thing for the survival of a hare is the legs in order to escape as quickly as possible?
- Yes.
But in a rabbit, in fact, the main thing is also the legs.
But he needs his legs mainly in order to dig holes and make for himself a reliable shelter from predators.
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"No one will catch up"
- How do hares get away from the chase?
- Hares, at least the white hare, are animals that can tread trails.
There is a path that hares regularly walk in winter, and it is very visible.
And if a predator is chasing a hare, then the hare runs out onto its path, which it confidently uses, runs along its trail for some time, and then abruptly jumps off this path to the side.
The hare can make a very large jump, one to two meters long.
And the predator, if he has lost sight of the hare, continues to run along the hare path, guided by the smell, and skips the place where the hare jumped to the side.
The hare also has such a wonderful anatomical adaptation to this: in a jump, it can literally fold at a right angle.
He has a very mobile spine.
The hare is such a swift-footed beast that if the predator did not catch up with the hare during the first minutes, then no one will catch up with it further.
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- What physiological features do rabbits and hares have?
“Rabbits, like hares, are animals that have learned to consume green fodder efficiently before other mammals.
And the main features of their physiology are connected with this.
At the same time, it is possible to effectively process green fodder only with the help of microorganisms that live in the intestines.
For example, in a cow, these microorganisms live in a very complex stomach.
But rabbits have a fairly simple stomach, about the same as a person's.
And they have microorganisms living in the caecum.
A person also has it - this is the same appendix, with which sometimes there are serious problems.
In a rabbit, part of the plant food comes from the intestines into the caecum.
There, this green mass, already chewed by the rabbit, is filled with various bacteria.
This nutrient mass with bacteria is secreted from the caecum, and the rabbits eat it.
This is an obligatory component of the digestion process in these animals: food passes through the intestines twice.
- When they talk about hares and rabbits, the first association for everyone is ears.
- The rabbit either holds the ears or folds them directly on the back.
He needs this in order not to obscure the view.
Rabbits and hares have large eyes.
They are located not in front, but on the sides of the head.
And a hare or a rabbit, when he sits, has an overview of actually 360 degrees.
They have excellent eyesight, excellent hearing and an excellent sense of smell.
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"The head of the family clan"
- Rabbits and hares are individualists or live in a family?
- Rabbits, unlike individualistic hares, are social animals.
They live in families.
In the rabbit settlement, such a hierarchy is very strict.
They have a real homebuilder.
The head of the family clan is the father rabbit.
If this is a dense settlement of rabbits, then most often he has several wives who regularly bring offspring.
And on the periphery of the family site, several young males can live, who are waiting for the opportunity to change the dominant.
And most often they wait, because the life of rabbits in nature is rather short.
Most often, a rabbit lives in nature for two to three years.
Rarely when their age reaches eight years.
The short lifespan is compensated by a rather high reproduction rate.
The rabbit is able to become pregnant in the first days after childbirth.
The rabbits develop for about a month, while the rabbit feeds them with milk.
And exactly the same amount of rabbits are already developing in the mother's stomach.
That is, as soon as the older rabbits become more or less independent, the next group of rabbits is born.
In Europe, a rabbit can bring offspring five to seven times in a season.
A few dozen is a normal number of cubs per year.
In winter, at least in Europe, rabbits do not breed.
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"An important element of the ecosystem"
- For this reason, they have become such a scourge for Australia that there is no such pronounced seasonality there?
Yes, that's the main reason.
By the way, rabbits could not be settled in Australia for a very long time, because local predators successfully fought with them.
For example, the marsupial marten has been quite successful in hunting rabbits.
And at first, Australian predators were only glad that they had another species that they could hunt.
But in the spaces that have already been liberated by man from local predators, rabbits have just multiplied.
In England itself, too, sometimes they try to fight rabbits.
Because in some places they are perceived as pests for agriculture and for the original flora - those plants that have always grown in the British Isles.
But here, in fact, the situation is also ambiguous.
Because in those places where rabbits do not fill everything, but live in some limited number, their growth is restrained by natural predators or human hunting, there rabbits contribute to the diversity of plants.
Because they mainly eat those herbs that grow in the greatest quantity.
And thus the rabbits control the growth of grasses.
Rabbits have become an important element of ecosystems in many places where they have long lived.
So you have to be very careful with them.
A rabbit named Zephyr / Pavel Kvartalnov is a senior researcher at the Department of Vertebrate Zoology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University.
© Press Service of Zaikafe / Frame: RT video
"Rabbits have long been domesticated"
“Farmers have a saying: if you want to make a profit, breed cows; if you want to keep your own, breed a bird; if you want to burn out, breed rabbits. Nevertheless, rabbits are willingly bred, there are a large number of breeds of very different directions. Why are rabbits so popular? Why not hares?
- Rabbits have long been domesticated, they are easy to work with.
Why breed hares if you can breed rabbits of the same size, if, for example, we are talking about meat breeds.
They are gigantic, larger than any hares that a hunter can get in nature.
In addition, rabbits, compared to hares, are homebodies.
They don't want to run away.
It is normal for them to exist in some limited territory.
Rabbits are inherently social animals.
For them, life in a society of their own kind is a normal phenomenon.
This is convenient when you do not need to seat animals.
Besides, rabbits don't need much care if they are kept in the countryside.
Their breeding does not require any very serious costs.
- In the year of the Rabbit, these animals will be especially popular. Data are already cited that the demand for live rabbits is ten times higher than last year's figures. For those who want to have rabbits at home, what pitfalls can they expect?
- It must be said right away that in no case should a living gift be presented without first knowing from the person whether he is ready for this.
You need to make sure in advance and find out if the children or any of the family members are allergic to rabbits.
You also need to understand that these are animals with very sharp teeth.
If, for example, a rabbit is released to walk around the house, then they are very fond of chewing on wires.
And besides, in any case, of course, you need to contact a specialist who will personally tell you in detail about what responsibility you take on if you decide to have such a pet.