hare

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Black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus) (credit: (Top) © G.C. Kelley/Photo Researchers, (bottom) Gordon Langsbury/Bruce Coleman Ltd.)

Bounding mammal (in the family Leporidae) whose young, unlike those of rabbits, are born fully haired, with open eyes, and sufficiently advanced to hop about a few minutes after birth. The common hare (Lepus europaeus) is native to central and southern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; introduced into Australia, it has become a pest there. In North America the jackrabbit and snowshoe hare are widespread. Many other species occur naturally on all principal landmasses except Australia. Hares have well-developed hind legs, and the ears are usually longer than the head. Species vary in length from 16 to 28 in. (4070 cm), without the short tail. Hares in northern latitudes are white in winter and grayish brown in summer; elsewhere, they are usually grayish brown year-round. Hares are primarily herbivorous.

For more information on hare, visit Britannica.com.

Game animal, similar to rabbit but larger; caught wild but not farmed commercially. Lepus europaeus is the common hare, but some twenty Lepus species occur in Europe. A 150-g portion is an extremely rich source of iron (15 mg); a rich source of protein; contains 12 g of fat; supplies 300 kcal (1260 kJ).

A larger relative of the rabbit the hare can weigh as much as 12 to 14 pounds, compared to a rabbit at about 5 pounds. Whether wild or domesticated, hares have a darker flesh and earthier flavor than rabbits. Wild hare, also called jackrabbit and snowshoe rabbit, generally needs marinating to tenderize it before cooking. Younger animals (1 year or less) can usually be roasted, whereas older animals are best cooked with moist-heat methods such as stewing or braising. One of the most famous dishes made with this animal is jugged hare. Although plentiful in the United States, hare isn't as popular here as in European countries.

From the Middle Ages onwards, hares have been considered unlucky. It is a bad omen if one crosses one's path, especially at the start of the day's work or of a journey; if one runs through a town, a house will burn down; no dead hare should be taken on board a fishing-boat, nor the word ‘hare’ spoken at sea. If a pregnant woman meets a hare, her baby will be born with a ‘harelip’, unless she immediately tears her petticoat. This is recorded first in Thomas Lupton's A Thousand Notable Things (1579); an earlier book, Gospelles of Dystaues (1507), warns women against eating hares, for the same reason: ‘Ye sholde not gyve to young maydens to ete the heed of a hare …and especyll to them that be wyth chylde for certaynly theyr chyldren might haue clouen lyppes.’

However, hares can bring luck or good health. Samuel Pepys carried a hare's foot in his pocket against colics, while others thought it prevented cramps and rheumatism, or protected against witchcraft (cf. rabbits). Countrywomen often soothed fretful babies by feeding them hare's brains to eat (N&Q 6s:1 (1880),34; 6s:4 (1880), 406, 457-8). One man joining the Navy in 1939 took a hare's foot as mascot (Evans and Thomson, 1972: 234).

In folklore, witches were commonly said to turn into hares; there was a widespread anecdote about a man who vainly hunted a hare which escaped into the house of an old woman—who was found panting hard. But if the hare's leg was bitten by the hunter's dog, or broken with a stone, or shot with a silver bullet, the witch would be found wounded in the same way; this, some said, took away her power (Brockie, 1886: 2-5). In Yorkshire, the hare was occasionally thought to be a familiar rather than the witch herself; when it was killed with a silver bullet, the witch cried out in grief (Henderson, 1866: 166-7; Blake-borough, 1898: 203). Both belief and story are in most regional collections, and persisted till the 1930s (Evans and Thomson, 1972: 164; Simpson, 1973: 69-70).

In the west of England white hares were said to be ghosts of forsaken girls, haunting their seducers; one caused her ex-lover's death by scaring his horse (Hunt, 1881: 377). In one Lincolnshire tale the Devil, in the form of a three-legged hare, causes the death of a boy who is playing at hanging himself, by distracting his companions at the crucial moment so that they fail to release him (Gutch and Peacock, 1908: 63).

Nowadays, many writers claim that hares were sacred to the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, but there is no shred of evidence for this; Bede, the only writer to mention Eostre, does not link her with any animal. For Celtic Britons, we have Julius Caesar's authority for saying hares were sacred and provided omens for Boudicca before a battle.

See also EASTER, EASTER EGGS.

Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.

• Opie and Tatem, 1989: 189-94
• Roud, 2003: 239-43

Tutor's tip: A "hare" (a large rabbit) can have very soft and valuable "hair" (the furry outgrowth of the body).

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See Rabbit.

• Lagomorphs
• Poultry and Game

Look up hare in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A hare is a mammal very closely related to the rabbit.

Hare may also refer to:

People:

• Hare (surname), including a list of people with the name
• Hare Indians or Slavey, a Canadian First Nations aboriginal people
• Hare Krishna Konar (1915–1974), Bengali communist politician
• Hare Te Rangi (born 1977), New Zealand former rugby league footballer

Places:

• Hare Bay (Newfoundland), Canada
• Hares Canyon, Oregon
• Hare Island, next to the port of Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, India
• Hare or Zayachy Island, St. Petersburg, Russia
• Hare, a hamlet in the parish of Broadway, Somerset

Other uses:

• Hare Baronets, three baronetcies, one of England and two of the United Kingdom
• Handley Page Hare, a British bomber aircraft retired in 1937
• Hare (hieroglyph)
• Hare (computer virus), which infected MS-DOS and Windows 95 machines in August 1996
• Hare School, one of the oldest schools (grades 1-12) in Kolkata, India
• Hare Field, a sports facility in Hillsboro, Oregon

See also

• Hare quota, a system of voting attributed to Thomas Hare
• Hare & Hare, a former landscape architecture firm in Kansas City, Missouri
• Sea hare, a small marine gastropod mollusc
• O'Hare (disambiguation)
• Hair (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Common misspelling(s) of hare

• hace

Dansk (Danish)
n. - hare, sporleg
v. intr. - løbe, fare, pile

idioms:

• hare off    styrte af sted

Nederlands (Dutch)
haas, bont van een haas, zich uit de voeten maken

Français (French)
n. - (Zool, Culin) lièvre
v. intr. - partir en trombe

idioms:

• hare off    partir en trombe

Deutsch (German)
n. - Hase
v. - schnell laufen

idioms:

• hare off    sausen, rennen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ζωολ.) λαγός
v. - (καθομ.) λακίζω, πιλαλώ

idioms:

• hare off    το βάζω στα πόδια

Italiano (Italian)
lepre

idioms:

• hare off    arrivare velocemente

Português (Portuguese)
n. - lebre (f) (Zool.)
v. - correr (gír.)

idioms:

• hare off    partir em corrida

Русский (Russian)
заяц, кролик

idioms:

• hare off    сбежать, быстро убраться

Español (Spanish)
n. - liebre
v. intr. - correr con rapidez

idioms:

• hare off    correr con gran rapidez

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - hare
v. - rusa, fly

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
兔, 野兔, 飞跑

idioms:

• hare off    飞跑

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 兔, 野兔
v. intr. - 飛跑

idioms:

• hare off    飛跑

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 산토끼, 무임 승차자
v. intr. - 질주하다, 빨리 달리다

idioms:

• hare off    질주하다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 野ウサギ

idioms:

• hare off    速く走る

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) الأرانب الوحشيه البريه التي تتميز بأن شفتها العليا مشقوفه (فعل) يركض بسرعه فائقه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮ארנבת‬
v. intr. - ‮רץ מהר‬

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