Thread: Blue Hare

That will be a hare with a hefty dose of Mountain Hare genes. The blue coloration is a dead giveaway.

99.9% of the hares we have here are the European Brown Hare. You have a 0.1% likelihood hare! Well, you know what I mean, its a rarity for sure.

Our hares came from Britain. It’s possible someone brought some in from somewhere else too, which makes the likelihood of one of the multiple subspecies interbreeding with the brown hare more likely. The Mountain Hare sub-species is found in Scotland with isolated populations in northern England. Crossbreeds used to pop up now and then in the Midlands. I’d say that what you’ve got there is a descendant of a Mountain Hare cross, that made its way over either with the original importation of hares in the mid-1800s, or maybe another way. The genes will have been passed down through hundreds of generations and at some point it’s inevitable that one will pop out that is a throwback.

Good find, and somewhat unfortunately it’s dead!