The rabbit

I Zoological classification of the Rodents and Lagomorphs of company

I.1 Classifies Mammals, Super Order of Glires

I.1.1 Order of the Rodents or Simplicidentes

A pair of incisors on the upper jaw. 27 families, more than 2000 species (either 45% of the species of Mammals).

The largest rodent: Cabiai or Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochoeris) 50kg for 1,20m length.

Smallest rodents: the harvest mouse (Mycrotis minutus) weight 7g, length 5,5cm and the Gerbil Pygmy of South Africa weight 10g.

I.1.2 Order of the Lagomorphs or Duplicidentes

Unlike the Rodents, to which they are often compared, the Lagomorphs have 2 pairs of incisors on the upper jaw for a total of 28 teeth.

Their dental formula is as follows:
- for 1/2 upper jaw (1/2 jawbone) 2 incisors, 0 canines, 3 premolars, 3 molars
- for 1/2 jaw lower (1/2 mandible) 1 incisor, 0 canines, 2 premolars, 3 molars.

The order of the Lagomorphs includes 2 families and 54 species.

I.1.2.1 Family of Ochotonidés

I.1.2.2 Family of Léporidés

Kinds Pentalagus, Lepus and Oryctolagus kinds
This family of wild rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) derives from the domestic stocks, which includes dwarf rabbit.

The rabbits and the hares are often mixed up. However, they are not directly related: the hare also belongs him to the family of Léporidés, but to the Lepus kind and not Oryctolagus as rabbit. Moreover, the hare of Central Europe has 46 chromosomes while the rabbit has only 44.

II. Principal domestic rabbit races

There are a large panel of domestic rabbit races . They can be gathered in several categories:
- giant races (Giant of Flandres, Giant French butterfly, French Ram...)
- medium races (Alaska, Gray of Bourbonnais, Norman...)
- races with fur (Rex, Ankara...)
- small races (Chinchilla, Russian, Lynx, Sable...)
- dwarf races (Polish or Hermine, Dwarves of color, dwarf lop...)

To see some photographs, click here.

All the rabbit races, pure or hybrid, might be house rabbits. The dwarf rabbits and the dwarf hybrids are the most usual.

Standards of the race dwarf rabbit:
- weight ranging between 0,9 and 1,5kg (ideally 1,1 to 1,25kg)
- length of the body lower than 21 cm except the Ankara and Bélier varieties (ears falling as at 2 months old, chamfer more crushed)
- ears of size lower than 5,5cm.

III. History of domestication

The wild specie, from which all the domestic rabbits are descendant, namely Oryctolagus cuniculus, known as " wild rabbit ", seems to have its cradle in Spain where the oldest fossil was discovered. It is known of the Human Being since ancestral times and was very precisely described in 1765 in the tenth volume of the Encyclopaedia of Sciences. This old description could act as first standard.

However, some centuries ago, more precisely during the 8th and 7th b.c. the rabbit meat is known as the only flesh-colored food. In the Medieval period, as Gregoire de Tours wrote in his history of the Francs, the gourmet monks and their taste for the laurices (dishes of foetus or very young rabbits already known in the Roman times) and were regarded as watery meats tolerated during the Lent.

The mode of breeding - one should rather say detention - does not authorize yet with speaking about domestication. It will be necessary to await XVIe century so that the rabbit finds refuge apart from the convents. The wild rabbits develop then closed (closed zones where one concentrated the animals).

The regrouping of animals, their relating protection vis-a-vis to the natural attackers and the multiplication in obligatory consanguinity increased the appearance of original natures (size, mass, color, structure of hairs). However, the gustatory quality of these animals, undoubtedly degenerated " enough " for lack of true natural selection or artificial, is poor, and one still prefers rabbits resulting from garennne to them natural.

At the XIXe century, with the abolition of the seigneuriaux privileges, (round of applause of wild rabbit), the rabbit hutches " appear " which authorize the separation of the ages and the sexes. A particular interest is granted to the rabbit which finds finally its place within the domestic animals.

IV Usual biological constants of dwarf rabbit