"Doug Freyburger" > wrote in message
...
> 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 ...

Methinks when you were born the Easter Bunny kicked you in the head.
Rabbits and Hares are in the same order, Lepus. The rabbits most folks know
and those used for food are hybridized... in nature they hybridized too but
over millions of years, they copulated as Lepus are wont to do, just like
hillybillys, and so many versions emerged but they are all the same genus,
none evolved separately. There are rabbits, hares, jackrabbits, and you, a
jackass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare