Most people associate hares with March; think of the expression “mad as a March hare” and the hare in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. So this is a bit early, but because of what I have seen and heard recently, I couldn’t wait another month. The madness, by the way, refers to the usually gentle hares’ behaviour in the spring when they can be seen apparently boxing – either males fighting for territory, or females trying to fend off unwanted suitors.
Hares are not rodents, but belong to the order Lagomorpha, along with the rabbits and pikas (which resemble tiny rabbits with small ears). Like rodents, lagomorphs are relatively small herbivores with gnawing teeth, they reproduce prodigiously and are very important members of the terrestrial food chain, being prey for many carnivores. In both groups, food is passed twice through the alimentary canal to get as much nutrition from the plant matter as possible (you don’t want to know any more details). Rodents and lagomorphs differ primarily in their dentition; for example, rabbits and hares have eight incisors (the teeth that do the gnawing), rodents have four.
In these islands it is easy to tell a hare from a rabbit; hares are larger, have longer ears, run instead of hop, and hide in depressions in the ground, not in burrows. But elsewhere, the names hare and rabbit are not so useful; for example, in America, jackrabbits are hares, while red rock hares from southern Africa are rabbits. This is rather like frogs and toads – we know what they look like here, because we only have one or two species, and it was us, the Europeans, who named them. But there are hundreds of species in other parts of the world, some of which look like frogs, some like toads and many in between. This is why zoologists use Latin names.
Worldwide, there are about 42 species of rabbit and 33 species of hare. They are native to all continents except Australasia and Antarctica, but rabbits have been introduced to Australia, with disastrous results. There are 37 species of pika, some found in Asia and some in North America. In the British Isles, there is only one species of rabbit and two of hare: the common or brown hare, and the mountain hare. The latter is smaller, and in the northern parts of its range, it turns white in winter. The only hare found in Ireland is a sub-species of the mountain hare; it doesn’t usually change colour in winter.
For most of the year, hares are shy creatures – the Latin name of ours, Lepus timidus hibernicus, means “timid Irish hare”. Their strategy for avoiding enemies is to lie low in the grass and hope for the best. You can almost walk on one before it will shoot off, at great speed. The common hare can run up to 70 kph; in Africa, the only predator that can catch a Cape hare is the cheetah.
Another difference between the hare and the rabbit is that the hares’ young, called leverets, are born fully furred and with their eyes open, which is vital as they do not have the safety of a burrow, unlike the helpless newly born rabbits. If you are lucky enough to come across a hare in late spring or summer – perhaps you just see its ears sticking out from the grass – please don’t go near; it might be a female with her young, and if she does run off, the leveret will then be left alone.
Hares have often featured in literature, usually as rather silly animals, which is not fair. There was the boastful, over confident one beaten by a tortoise in ‘Aesop’s Fables’, and the one in the African legend about the hare and the chameleon bringing God’s word to Mankind (in his haste, the hare got the message wrong, which is why we are mortal). As well as Lewis Carroll’s March hare, there was also the conceited hare in Alison Uttley’s enchanting animal books, which my mother read to me and my sister very many years ago. Such books teach children about wildlife, and must also make them more compassionate – I don’t believe anyone who has read the ‘Great Adventure of Hare’ could possibly want to go out and kill one.
There was a time when, on my wanderings around the fields and cliffs, I would meet many hares, but I haven’t seen one now for two years. You might think that is because they have all been eaten by foxes, except the foxes have nearly all disappeared too.
Hares are supposedly protected by the Wildlife Act of 1976. But they are not – they are captured and used in the barbaric sport of coursing. What sense does that make? Protected by law, but still legally tormented for fun? The dogs used in coursing are muzzled, and the “sport” is supposedly regulated. But does anyone think the hare enjoys being chased and knocked about, and often badly injured? And if the hare is not enjoying itself, the word that describes this activity is cruelty. Why, in a supposedly civilised country, is cruelty allowed?
An even worse wildlife crime has emerged recently. A report on RTE news told about groups of men from urban areas, with dogs, who have been entering land in Clare and Tipperary, without permission, to kill hares. They find the hares using thermal-imaging binoculars, set their dogs after them, and take photographs of the results, which they put online to show other barbarians. There is also gambling involved, for big money.
As well as being terrible for the hares, this is also scary for local people, who don’t want dangerous strangers wandering around their land. It appears to be a nationwide problem. Recently, some men with rifles appeared in the lane near my home. I have no idea what they were doing, but it certainly wasn’t anything good. I now imagine every stranger to be an animal killer, and every van that passes down the lane loaded with horrible hunters.
Our ancestors hunted wild animals for food, but that is not necessary now, not in wealthy Ireland anyway. So a grown man chasing an animal for fun is like a domestic cat playing with a bird in the garden – a primitive instinct that, in the case of the human, should have been expunged by civilisation and good education.
After my last article, I was contacted by a reader from Glengarriff, who loves animals and is extremely worried about the way humans treat them. She wanted to know what she could do. I’m afraid my answers at the time seemed quite inadequate. What can we do?
Well, we can better educate our children – give them books about animals, take them to Fota, show them every documentary that David Attenborough ever made, bring them up in households full of well-loved and cared-for pets, detach them from their phones and get them out into the countryside to observe the real world.
We must, of course, report any suspicious strangers with guns and dogs to the Gardaí. And we could write to our politicians, demanding they do more to protect our wildlife. But I wouldn’t expect too much there; I am still waiting to hear from the animal-loving West Cork TD! Then again, it is only a couple of months since I wrote to him; I have yet to receive a reply from another TD to whom I sent an email, about basking sharks and plastic, two years ago.
There really should be a Department for Nature, led by someone who actually knows and cares about wildlife, not a career politician. At the moment, the National Parks and Wildlife Service is incongruously tacked on to the already busy Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. But I don’t suppose many agree with me – if people really cared about the environment, then the Green Party (or something more effective) would be in power. So the natural world will continue to shrink and suffer as the human one inexorably expands, and your grandchildren will have as much chance of seeing a hare as they will a dodo, a gryphon or a mock turtle.
