. . . [Norman Halkett] is one of the few people to have seen the mysterious circular assembly of hares. . . .
"No one has ever been able to explain to me fully just why hares do on occasion sit in a wide circle with one or two or even more of their number having a gambols or frolics inside the circle. . . . I have seen it at least three times in my life, from as small a circle as say ten or twelve, to as many as thirty or forty hares, all performing at once. Some standing up . . . bolt upright on their hind-legs, others sitting on their hunkers, as we say, and some actually lying down as though they weren't paying much attention. But it does happen and I would honestly like to know what it really means."
– Excerpted fromThe Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson p. 53
Despite their reputation for rapid increase and hyper-sexuality, hares are not especially prolific breeders compared to rabbits – much less so compared to rodents. . . . But the brown hare does exhibit one extraordinary reproductive capacity which has provided, in the exaggerated descriptions given of it from Aristotle onwards, the basis for its reputation for unique and almost preternatural sexual proclivities and increase.
Unlike most mammals, both female rabbits and hares will continue to mate while pregnant. But only the brown hare is capable of conceiving a second time – of carrying two potential litters at different stages of development. Superfetation, as it is called, can occur as a rare event in most mammals, even in humans. It has been recorded in populations of brown hares in up to 13 percent of females, a remarkably high and probably conservative figure. For Aristotle it was a primary characteristic of hares – and subsequent writers almost competed with each other to emphasize and exaggerate its miraculousness.
The Arabian hare is the largest species of Cape hare and can be found in Syria, Lebanon, northern Israel, the United Arab Emirates and across the Arabian peninsula. Arabic names for hares in this region include arnab, arneeb, harneed and haineeb.
Arabian hares have exceptionally long ears and pale, almost bleached coats which serve as effective camouflage for their life in the desert.
Much smaller than their European counterparts, Arabian hares rarely drink water, but obtain moisture from the grasses and shrubs that they eat.
Hares have . . . developed relatively complex escape and concealment strategies in addition to speed, endurance and camouflage. . . . The brown hare in particular employs elaborate means to confuse its scent trail, including doubling back on its tracks; leaping sideways to break the trail; entering and leaving its form in ways designed to construct a 'maze' for predators hunting by scent. They also establish regular routes or 'racetracks' in the vicinity of their forms, and 'meuses' or gaps in hedges and fences facilitating rapid egress from enclosed fields.
"Like a hare, springing erect and bounding exuberantly across a dew-kissed field, the beauty and energy of the aroused male embodies the burgeoning life force often associated with spring. After all, the hare is symbolic of natural phenomena that connote actions of the aroused male: the rising sun, the coming spring. In folklore, art and dreams, hares herald great bursts of energy and creativity. They are often thought to be touched by divine madness, by a spirit of anarchy that overturns dogmatic tradition and restrictions. They are tricksters, offering us new ways of seeing and being in the world. They are emblems of the integration of body and soul."
"In many mythic traditions, [hares] were archetypal symbols of femininity, associated with the lunar cycle, fertility, longevity, and rebirth. But if we dig a little deeper into their stories we find that they are also contradictory, paradoxical creatures: symbols of both cleverness and foolishness, of femininity and androgyny, of cowardice and courage, of rampant sexuality and virginal purity. In some lands, Hare is the messenger of the Great Goddess, moving by moonlight between the human world and the realm of the gods; in other lands he is a god himself, wily deceiver and sacred world creator rolled into one."
"The [medieval] bestiarists [those who named and attributed human characteristics to animals] deemed the hare’s sex to be ambiguous, and its mode of reproduction strange. They included the hare in a group of several beasts that they asserted had been declared unclean in the Mosaic law because of their alleged sexual deviance . . . Moses Azikri (1533-1600) wrote that one who is involved in homosexual relations is reincarnated as a hare."
– Marc Michael Epstein Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature
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