Deer-leporid Hybrids

Mammalian Hybrids

EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ
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I am obliged to report that which is reported, but not to believe it.
—Herodotus, The History, VII, 152.
deer-hare hybrid A horned hare (detail from Hoefnagel, Animalia Qvadrvpedia et Reptilia, Terra Volume: Plate XLVII, from Four Elements, 1575).

Caution! The evidence for this cross is extremely poor.

A leporid is any mammal of the family Leporidae: the rabbits and hares. A hybrid very similar to those pictured on this page has been very frequently hoaxed. Known as the jackalope, it has been mass produced by taxidermists and is usually assembled from the antlers of a pronghorn attached to the body of a jackrabbit. However, deer antlers are also sometimes used. Strictly speaking, a jackrabbit is not a rabbit, but a hare.

In its article on the jackalope (accessed 2/3/2018), Wikipedia states that “early scientific texts described and illustrated [these] hybrids as though they were real creatures, but by the end of the 18th century scientists generally rejected the idea of horned hares as a biological species.” An example of such an early scientific illustration of a deer-hare hybrid is shown above.

And yet there have been serious claims that horned leporids do exist. Thus, according to a 1913 news report, an animal with the body of a jackrabbit and the antlers of a deer was shot in southern Texas. A screenshot of the report appears below. It appeared in the Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, Sea Coast Echo (Apr. 12, 1913, p. 2, col. 1):

deer-hare hybrid

And a report of the same ilk appeared in the Greencastle, Indiana, Daily Banner and Times (Feb. 16, 1897, p. 4, col. 7):

Rabbit That Had Horns

.     J. C. Rutledge, while hunting near Elk City, brought down a rabbit which upon examination proved to be a freak of nature, having a pair of well developed horns, says a Wichita special to Daily Facts. The animal did not differ in any respect from the ordlnary “cotton tail” except that right At the base of the ears there cropped out two well-defined horns a little over two inches in length and about an inch in circumference. They were composed of a hard substance of about the consistency of a horse's hoof and there is n reason to doubt that they had been there from birth. The monstrosity is being mounted by a taxidermist.
deer-cow hybrid Above: A report about a deer-rabbit hybrid (possibly a joke?) in the Benton Harbor, Michigan, News-Palladium (Dec. 4, 1913, p. 8, col. 2; ||y5fjsfo7).

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By the same author: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press (2006).