Tyler Santora is the Health & Science Editor at Fatherly and a Colorado-based freelance science journalist who covers everything related to science, health and the environment, particularly in relation to marginalized communities. Ware, Massachusetts, drew media attention to its local reputation for alligator sightings. Shope managed to get hold of samples of rabbit horns from hunters and carried out experiments on them. Just to be clear, none of these jackalope mounts ever belonged to real jackalopes. According to Dorson, in Mythical Creatures of the North Country (1969), historian Walker D. Wyman acknowledged the existence of what he called the Alkali Area Jackalope of the western United States. Here's what does. The tumors can become malignant in some rabbits. One day, the brothers went hunting and returned home with a jackrabbit. Ball was proud to display his Jackalope head in the lobby of his LaBonte Hotel in Douglas, Wyoming. (Uruiamme / CC BY-SA 2.0 ). The hunter must have an IQ greater than 50 but not over 72. Was the Ahuizotl an Aztec Mythical Creature or a Real Fishermans Foe? The original advocate for jackalope recognition was Rep. Dave Edwards, who sponsored the jackalope bill in 2005 and even went so far as to bring ten mounted jackalopes with him to the House floor. The jackalope has appeared in published stories, poems, television shows, video games, and a low-budget mockumentary film. Ball then proudly displayed it on the wall of his hotel, the LaBonte. Its horns were also known to be especially sharp, which eventually inspired the recommendation to wear stove pipes over ones legs when hunting the beast. Shope then acquired a tissue sample of the horns, ground them up, filtered out everything but the viruses, and rubbed the filtered solution onto the heads of healthy bunnies. Jackalope is a portmanteau of jackrabbit and antelope. Papillomaviruses are common in many species, and each type typically infects members of a specific host species, Branch said. Garden Rockery Decorative Piece Turns Out to Be Rare 600-Year-Old Hand Cannon! [17], In Man and Beast in American Comic Legend, folklorist Richard Dorson recounts the Douglas variant but also an alternative that will "surely infuriate the residents of Douglas". The jackalope, an animal with the body of a jackrabbit and the antlers of an antelope or deer, is a cultural icon of the American West. As indicated in this report, even though no such hybrid animal exists, there's a hint of truth in the legend, professor Michael Branch of literature and environment at the University of Nevada, Reno said. Nevertheless, such growths do not always look similar to antlers. Taxidermy of a Jackalope. [32], Jackalopes have appeared in movies and on television. Throughout history, the theft of valuable artifacts has captivated the public's imagination, revealing the audacity and cunning of those who sought to possess pieces of our shared heritage. [44], A low-budget jackalope mockumentary, Stagbunny, aired in Casper and Douglas in 2006. The show's host, Dave Coulier, voiced the rascally hybrid. Branch explained, though, that the illness is frequently deadly in rabbits that do. At one point, tourists could even purchase taxidermied and mounted jackalopes for $35 or even cheaper. It is characterized as having the body of a rabbit and the antlers of a deer. While many are aware that the license is part of the joke, a significant number of tourists are surprised when they read the history and legal notice and regulations. Oh yeah. The strange piece attracted the attention of many guests, and soon began to draw visitors of its own. Related information about jackalopes is shown on Interesting Topics' YouTube video below: RELATED ARTICLE:Endangered Philippine Monkey-Eating Eagle Hatches Chick in Captivity. Cleopatra Selene II, daughter of the famed Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII and Roman general Mark Antony, led a remarkable and turbulent life that intertwined the legacies of both Egypt and Rome. They're often black and asymmetrical, and not nearly as majestic as the antlers of the jackalope. Admittedly, taxidermy isn't easy, and mounting a thousand of any kind of wall trophy probably gets old. Using rabbit tissues given to him by Shope, Rous spent the next few decades injecting viruses deep into rabbits, which caused them to develop aggressive cancers. According to Ralph, after looking at the carcass directly beneath the antlers Douglas exclaimed, Lets mount it the way it is!. Douglas and his brother, Ralph, were hunters who had acquired some skills in taxidermy through mail order. A search for "jackalope" in the WorldCat listings of early 2015 produced 225 hits, including 57 for books. What they didnt expect, however, was the urban legends that began to develop as the creature became more well-known in America. Sadly, it seems that the historic stolen head has never been recovered. Stuffed and mounted, jackalopes are found in many bars and other places in the United States; stores catering to tourists sell jackalope postcards and other paraphernalia, and commercial entities in America and elsewhere have used the word jackalope or a jackalope logo as part of their marketing strategies. Snake oil salesmen claimed that the milk of a jackalope was a potent aphrodisiac horny rabbit, get it? No one believed me. The Wyoming Legislature has considered bills to make the jackalope the state's official mythological creature. Rabbits don't naturally grow horns. Enormous 240 million-year-old sea monster had its head torn off in one clean bite, Mysterious spiral signals in the human brain could be key to our cognition, 1st over-the-counter gel for erectile dysfunction approved by the FDA. At some point someone decided to combine the name of the pronghorn antelope with jackrabbit, thus the name "jackalope." Illustrations of horned hares go back as far as the 16th century in scholarly European works. The gist of the story is: All human beings used to speak the Across the sands of time, the echoes of ancient warfare resound, revealing a captivating glimpse into the evolution of human conflict. There was some evidence that viruses could cause cancer in birds. Jackalopes of Wyoming Myth or Reality?. Our open community is dedicated to digging into the origins of our species on planet earth, and question wherever the discoveries might take us. Douglas and Ralph Herrick were two typical American brothers. Not bouncing around, of course, but go to enough sketchy bars, mountain hotels, or rugged ski lodges, and you'll eventually see one of these cryptid creatures mounted on a wall. The proper name was Lepus cornutus. Guess what? Over time, the jackalope was embellished with many incredible stories, so as to make it seem like a supernatural creature . [45][46] An Odessa sports writer expressed concern about the team's name, which he found insufficiently intimidating and which sounded like "something you might eat for breakfast. In a turnabout from his earlier claims of a North Country origin for the antlered hare, he says, "The center of its vast range seems to be Wyoming." Some such stories lend themselves to comic hoaxing by entrepreneurs who seek attention for their own personal or their region's fortune. Nonetheless, it was only a matter of time before jackalope "sightings" started popping up to go along with the stories. They valued family, spent plenty of time together, and enjoyed hunting in the woods. It is generally believed that Douglas Herrick came up with the story of the jackalope with an accidental placement of antlers that eventually formed the first taxidermied jackalope. Well, you ride those coattails, of course. Thereafter, they made and sold many similar jackalopes to a retail outlet in South Dakota, and another taxidermist continues to manufacture the horned rabbits in the 21st century. However, the jackalope does appear to have a European cousin, which in Germany is known as the wolperdinger. Name. The jackalope is a legendary creature mentioned in the folklore of North America. Rabbits can grow horn-like appendages, but not like the deer antlers found on most examples of Jackalopes. Copyright 2023 The Science Times. [29] On the other side of the world, The Hop Factory craft beer cafe in Newcastle, Australia, uses a leaping jackalope as its logo. Experts Explain. Let's dive in. Governor Ed Herschler officially designated Wyoming as the jackalope's stomping grounds in 1985, according to the New York Times, and the very name jackalope which, if you hadn't noticed, is a very on-the-nose portmanteau of jackrabbit and antelope was trademarked by the state of Wyoming in 1965. All Rights Reserved. Among the bats, rats and other ferocious animals that lie within the storage drawers of the mammal collection in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., an unusual freak of nature can be found. The creature, described in Live Science as an animal with a "jackrabbit and the antlers" of a deer or antelope, is the region's cultural icon. He says one of his favorite stories came from an airport customs snafu in the U.K., where a jackalope head found in an American woman's luggage was confiscated because it was presumed to belong to a protected species. The jackalope, just like its hairy cousin Bigfoot, has become something of an American institution. They also allegedly possess an uncanny ability to mimic human sounds and when chased will use these abilities to elude capture. Gradually, over 10,000 years or so, through interbreeding and crossbreeding with smaller species the Jackalope came about. One of the rarest animals in the world, it is a cross between a now extinct pygmy-deer and a species of killer-rabbit. Once the word got out, the Herrick brothers had a new business plan, and selling jackalope souvenirs would become their eternal legacy. Almost all evidence of the strange hybrid points back to two brothers who came up with the idea for the creature seemingly by fate. According to the New York Times, Ralph churned out hundreds upon hundreds of the things, eventually passing down the trade to his son, Jim, who continued to deliver jackalopes as recently as 2003. When the brothers first began marketing the unusual mounted Jackalope heads to businesses near and far, they knew that they needed a story that would explain the history of the creature to curious customers. A 13th-century Persian work depicts a rabbit with a single horn, like a unicorn. And while some people may seem content with the story as it stands, our view is that there existcountless mysteries, scientific anomalies and surprising artifacts thathave yet to be discovered and explained. Thousands of "licenses" have been issued. Now, the Jackalope has its own statue in the city of Douglas and is memorialized on t-shirts, key chains, and other memorabilia. The image of the creature is sold on all sorts of knickknacks in the region, from postcards to shot glasses. For all its fearsome and impressive qualities, it was rumored that the Jackalope could be persuaded to come to a human willingly and even be captured if they were offered their favorite drink: whiskey. [Online] Available at: https://www.legendsofamerica.com/wy-jackalope/www.jackalopearts.org, 2019. A horned rabbit may have inspired the myth about the existence of the jackalope myth, although that's far from sure. They say that it is tumorous material instead. Towering over I-25, the giant fiberglass jackalope will stand 80 feet above the plains. The underlying legend of the jackalope, upon which the Wyoming taxidermists were building, may be related to similar stories in other cultures and other historical times. [13] It is said that jackalopes, the rare Lepus antilocapra, only breed during lightning flashes and that their antlers make the act difficult despite the hare's reputation for fertility. When Ralph declared that it looked like a rabbit with horns on it, Douglas, a taxidermist, decided to mount it. 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