Kenneth > wrote:
>
> Is not a hare a rabbit?

They are a case of parallel evolution. They evolved
from unrelated ancestors into a common ecological
niche so from the outside they can be hard to tell
apart.

Thanks to an Iron Chef America episode I finally
got to see rabbits and hares side by side already
skinned. Their meat looks very different. Rabbit
meat is lighter than chciken but slightly pink. Hare
meat is a dark reddish brown. I'm not sure how
different their flavor is.

For folks interested enough in skeleton details to
have a microscope to measure tiny details there are
apparently enough differences in their skeletons to
suggest very different ancestry. Thanks to a display
in some science museum that I visited as a kid ...