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Written by Rowan Caulkins
April 2023
It’s that time of the year. Spring has arrived, and the popular holiday–Easter–comes just 20 days (April 9th this year) after the arrival of Spring (March 20th). Easter is a time to celebrate life and rebirth as well as search for hidden eggs, left behind by the mysterious Easter Bunny.
However, this bunny holds quite the dark little secret. That secret is that the Easter Bunny is no bunny at all. In truth, the Easter Bunny is a hare, an ancient symbol of life and fertility.
Originating among German Lutherans, the legend of the Easter Bunny was born somewhere between the 17th and 18th century. It was originally believed that the hare would act as a judge of children’s behavior, determining whether they were good or bad. Similar to Santa Claus, the Easter hare would bring gifts to the worthy children on the night before the holiday in a basket filled with colored eggs, candy, and sometimes toys.
According to European Easter traditions, the Easter Bunny is also referred to by its more proper name, the Easter Hare. Its unusual name in other countries is believed to relate to pagan tradition, where the symbol of Eostre–a goddess of fertility–was a rabbit. However, scholars cannot determine specifically if the rabbit was the symbol of Eostre.
A fake and a fraud
Despite their many similarities, hares and rabbits actually belong to different genuses. Hares belong to the genus Lepus and rabbits branch out into 10 different genuses. As for the differences between rabbits and hares, distinguishing features include the following: hares are larger, have bigger ears, and longer legs than their rabbit relatives. They also live far less-crowded lives than rabbits, preferring to live alone or in pairs in above ground nests as opposed to living underground in colonies of up to 20 others of their kind, like rabbits do.
A common misconception about rabbits and hares is that they belong to the rodent order. They do not. Both hares and rabbits belong to the lagomorph, which includes not only rabbits and hares, but pikas (a small mountain-dwelling mammal found in Asia and North America) as well. The difference between these two orders actually lies in their jaws. Lagomorphs have 4 incisors in their upper jaw while rodents only have 2 incisors.
Not all of the common Easter mascots around the world are lagomorphs, though. In fact, Australia’s Easter mammal of choice is none other than the bilby, a burrowing marsupial native to the country. And Australia isn’t the only country to have a non-lagomorph Easter mascot. There are other countries with non-lagomorph mascots as well, such as France with its Easter bells, and Sweden with its Easter Witch.
Rabbit
Hare
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