Sheep-hare Hybrids?

Mammalian Hybrids

EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ

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Location of Lappion

An old report, published in the March 1727 issue of the French periodical Suite de la Clef, ou Journal historique sur les matières du temps (pp. 229-230), describes a conjoined twin that was allegedly the hybrid of a hare and a sheep. It reads as follows: “M. Chanvalon, residing in Lappion, in the Diocese of Laon, two leagues from Notre Dame de Liesse, writes me to say that in mid-January, a ewe in that village yeaned a stillborn monster having the bodies of

two lambs conjoined, one male and one female. But there was only a single head, which was that of a hare. The nose, the whiskers, teeth and eyes could not be mistaken. The ears, too, were like a hare's, but there were three, two in the ordinary positions, and a third in the middle atop the head. The head and neck held the shoulders of the two bodies, with their four forelegs, together. The bodies were separate, with each having its own belly, tail, two hind-legs and the rest. And all these parts were of a proper size and proportion. The neck and shoulders, as well as all of the back as far as the tail, were covered with the fur of a hare, but the eight legs, two tails and the lower portion of the body of this double animal were covered in wool. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French.]

The German chronicler Johann Christoph Becmann (Historische Beschreibung der Chur und Mark Brandenburg, 1751, vol. 1, p. 883) stated that a lamb was born with the ears of a hare at Bernau in Germany in 1666.

In addition, the early medical journal Miscellanea Curiosa (1677, vol. 8, supplement, Observation XLVI, p. 209) mentions a very early record (1174 A.D.) of a lamb being born with the ears of a hare.

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

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