Wild Hares Research Articles

Relationship between habitat, densities and metabolic profile in brown hares (Lepus europaeus Pallas)

Some habitat traits and haematic parameters were studied to understand the relationships between the hare densities, habitat characteristics and physiological and nutritional condition of the animals. A total of 33 protected areas, reserved for wild game reproduction, located in the Province of Florence (Central Italy), were monitored during a 2-year period. In each protected area the hares were submitted to census. The habitat features of the protected areas were studied and the following parameters were categorised: altitude; cleared-land/total-land ratio; main exposure; main ground composition; water availability; main slope; anthropogenic presence; predator presence; wooded borders; presence of trees and shrubs; surveillance against hunting; demographic predator control; kind of cultivation; unharvested crops for game. After the census the hares were captured for translocation outside in “free” hunting areas. During capture the hares were put in darkened, wooden capture-boxes and remained inside for a variable period of time (10min to 3h). A sample of 3 to 7 hares, captured per year and per each protected area, were removed from the boxes (physically restrained, with covered eyes) for blood sample collection, sex, age and live weight determination. The following analyses were performed on frozen plasma samples: ALanine aminoTransferase (ALT), ASpartate aminoTransferase (AST), glucose, cholesterol, Blood Urea Nitrogen (BUN), Ca, P, Mg, Na, K, and Cl concentrations. The relationship between hare density and habitat characteristics was analysed by single regressions analysis. Then the habitat characteristics were subjected to multivariate analysis in relationship to hare body condition. The haematic parameters were analysed by least square means considering habitat traits, animal density, age and sex, as main categorical factors, interaction sex*age, and “pregnant and non-reproducing” nested within sex. Results showed that the highest density and best body conditions can be found in highlands, open fields with low tree presence and wooded borders, medium mixture soils, scarce predator presence and limited anthropogenic presence and with abundant water availability and shrubbiness. The study of the absolute values of metabolic profile, indicator of the physiological and nutritional condition of the reared animals, did not show any nutritional winter deficiency in wild hares and, as census data, should be repeated for several years since, probably, only their variations can be used as indicators of preliminary problems.

Stress evaluation in hares (Lepus europaeus Pallas) captured for traslocation

With the aim to evaluate the capturing techniques some haematic and physiological parameters were studied to discriminate stressed hares from non stressed hares.A total of 66 wild hares (experimental group) were sampled in 14 different non-hunting areas, where hares are usually captured for later release in low-density areas. In the same season a total of 30 hares (about 1 year old), reared in cages and thus showing a reduced fear of man, were sampled (control group). In each area the hares were captured by coursing with 3-4 dogs (greyhounds or lurches). The dogs were released by the different hunter teams to find and drive into trammel nets any hare that was seen running. After capture, the hares remained inside darkened, wooden capture-boxes for a variable period of time before blood drawing. For blood sample collection all the hares were physically restrained and their eyes immediately covered. Blood, always collected within 1-2 minutes, was drawn from the auricular vein. Blood samples (plasma) were analysed for glucose, AST, ALT, CPK and cortisol concentrations. Body temperature, heart and respiratory rate, sex, and age were evaluated in each hare. The effect of origin, sex and age on haematic and physiological parameters was analysed by ANOVA. Every measured parameter of the hares bearing to the capture group or the control group (reared) was then subjected to stepwise and to discriminant analysis, in order to select the groups of stressed (discriminated by the controls) and non-stressed hares.CPK, AST and glucose were found to be the best parameters for distinguishing stressed from non-stressed hares. The intensive exercise suffered by the wild hares induced a depletion of energetic reserves, so that most of the captured hares showed lower glucose and higher CPK activity in the plasma, probably due to muscle damage (P< 0.05). After reclassifying the hares in the two groups of stressed and non stressed hares, the reference values (means ± SE) resulted as follows: estimated non-stressed hares, glucose 234 ± 9 .4 mg/dl, AST 112 ± 22.2 U/l, CPK 1334 ± 734 U/l; estimated stressed hares, glucose 128 ± 7 mg/dl, AST 164 ± 13 U/l, CPK 4658 ± 454 U/l.These three cheap and quickly analysable analytes can be useful to the game manager in detecting stressed and non stressed hares, in order to improve the capturing techniques by the evaluation of the following relationship: (number of stressed hares + number of the dead hares during the capture)/number of total captured hares.

A Spontaneous and Fatal Jejunal Intussusception in a European Brown Hare Associated withEimeria leporis

A recently dead adult female European brown hare (Lepus europaeus Pallas) was found in the wild with no evidence of trauma or external injury. Necropsy revealed symptoms consistent with endotoxic shock and a haemorrhagic jejuno-jejunal intussusception with a necrotic intussusceptum. Small, unattached nodules were present extensively in the jejunal lumen and within the intussuscipiens. These nodules proved to be masses of unsporulated Eimeria leporis oocysts. Review of the literature reveals E. leporis to be a common parasite of wild hares, with protracted pathogenic potential under some circumstances. This is the first report of intussusception in this species and the most severe lesion seen associated with E. leporis. This case suggests that E. leporis may be more harmful to the wild European brown hare population than previously supposed.

"Wild Hares and Red Herrings": A Case Study of Estate Management in the Eighteenth-Century English Countryside

During the summer of 1762, at the death of George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe, his estates in Somersetshire and Dorsetshire, by force of law and extended litigation, became the property of his kinsman and political rival, Richard Grenville, Earl Temple.1 Subsequently, for almost a score of years, Temple personally expended considerable effort in the attempt to make these hard-won properties profitable. Although he achieved moderate success in Somerset, the enterprise in Dorset was a burdensome disappointment. Nevertheless, for posterity Temple's West Country adventures did yield a substantial treasure-a relatively complete documentary record now preserved in the collections of the Huntington Library at San Marino, California. From this wealth of materials I want, in this paper, to explore problems of estate management arising from Temple's acquisition of the Dorset estate of Eastbury in particular-especially those posed by absentee ownership, relations among landlords and between landlords and tenants, and the use and abuse of game laws and the laws of trespass on Temple's West Country estates.2 Richard, Earl Temple, is a well-known figure in eighteenth-century British political history. As the older brother of George Grenville, brother-in-law of the elder William Pitt, and patron of John Wilkes, he played an active-though usually a supporting-role in major political events of the reigns of George II and George III. He was not only an active parliamentarian for almost four decades, first in Commons then in Lords, he was also a notoriously powerful political patron who controlled or sig-

The Gentleman Who Was Thursday

When Marie Failinger and I began to play with metaphors as we talked about the scroll to honor Tom Shaffer, well, we did consider and discard some. From that heap of castoffs, I want to begin big and tell you the clearest discard, the biggest miss: Tom as a peach of a man. The positive side of the image is roundness as an indicator of wholeness, of even feminine circularity, of integrity. The down side of roundness need not be spelled out in detail (and we certainly do not want to suggest fuzziness)… but there is that one lingering wild hare, the peach's suggestion of the Southern gentleman, that Atticus Finch or Walker Percy who never quite migrates into the contemporary scene. That Southern gentry anomaly is central to Tom, and the struggle with how he can almost redeem the notion of lawyer as gentleman is for me the story of Tom as round in the finest sense, like a magic circle cast by the best of the Spirit, gentle, true, deceptively radical, quietly if slowly revolutionary, and only just a little repetitious. (Consider the list of 274 of his publications we got in the conference materials—274! I certainly have not read all 274, but even within the ones I have, there is stuff I've seen more than once). Even that repetition becomes the mark of fidelity, however. For Tom is unwilling to leave even the anachronism, the gentleman lawyer, out of the circle into which he has invited a persistently motley crew of clients and friends and students and invisible rabbits (ask him about Elwood Dowd sometime).

Acute hepatosis in the European brown hare (Lepus europaeus) in Italy.

Since October 1986 an unusually high mortality has been observed both in wild European brown hares (Lepus europaeus) and in hare farms in Italy. Pathological alterations, including severe hepatosis, nephrosis, congestion and hemorrhages of tracheal mucosa and lungs, and splenic vascular congestion, were observed in 179 of 381 hares necropsied from 1986 to 1988. Jaundice also was seen in 30% of these hares. Histologically, the liver damage was characterized by coagulative necrosis, mainly located around the portal areas, or by degenerative changes. Hyperemia, focal hemorrhages and periportal mononuclear cell infiltration were also present. The epithelium of renal tubules showed the presence of various degrees of vacuolar degeneration and necrosis, and eosinophilic granular hyaline casts or homogenous proteinaceous material were found within the lumen of tubules. Only the adult hares were affected. In wild hare populations night counts revealed a reduction of the number of observed wild hares during the winter period which ranged from 27 to 40%, whereas in hare farms the mortality ranged from 30 to 90%. Bacteriological, parasitological, and toxicological investigations were unable to confirm the primary cause of these deaths. Negative stain electron microscopy and immunoelectronmicroscopy conducted since October 1988 on liver and spleen homogenates from hares with acute hepatosis revealed the presence of viral particles with morphological aspects resembling those of calicivirus, antigenically related to the etiological agent of viral haemorrhagic disease of rabbits.

The Spider as a Possible Source of Tularemia

To the Editor.— Tularemia is endemic in Oklahoma, with the annual incidence averaging 21 cases. The pathogen Francisella tularensis has been recovered from more than 100 species of animals and insects. 1 Known vectors of transmission to humans include wild hares, muskrats, squirrels, skunks, deerflies, and ticks. 2-4 The following case report documents a previously unreported vector of transmission: the brown spider. Report of a Case.— A 37-year-old man saw and felt a spider bite his upper right arm. Within one day he developed fever and chills, with marked inflammation around the region of the bite. He was given cephalexin for suspected cellulitis. Because of persistent fever and malaise, with the development of right axillary adenopathy, he was admitted to the hospital the following evening and administered intravenous antibiotics. After several days of limited improvement marked by severe myalgias despite reduction of local erythema and adenopathy, high-dose corticosteroids were administered for

A waterborne tularemia outbreak.

A waterborne tularemia outbreak is described. Forty nine cases were identified in Sansepolcro, a small Medioeval town in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy. All cases had laterocervical or sub-mandibular adenitis, and occurred within a period of three weeks during March and April 1982. The study showed association between cases and the consumption of water from an unchlorinated water system. Francisella tularensis type 1 was isolated from wild hares captured in the area.

Parental Care and Adult Aggression toward Juvenile Snowshoe Hares

The early life of the snowshoe hare was studied through observations and experiments involving penned and wild hares. Parental care was limited to the adult female. Her care extended only to lactation and possibly to some guarding of her offspring. The leverets gathered at the birth/nursing site 1-2 hours after sunset and suckled immediately upon the arrival of the female for 2-5 minutes. The leverets born in the pens gained 17.1 g per day for the first 60 days of life. Weaned juveniles caught in the wild were introduced into a pen containing resident adults and juveniles. All 30 introduced juveniles were involved in interactions with residents, both adults and juveniles. The introduced juveniles were involved in and were the losers in more antagonistic interactions than were resident juveniles. Similar adult/juvenile and juvenile/juvenile interactions were observed in an unmanipulated wild population of hares, although the residential status of many of the participants was unknown. We concluded that aggression from resident adults and juveniles could lead to spacing behaviour and might therefore affect juvenile recruitment.Key words: Lepus americanus, snowshoe hare, spacing behaviour, dispersal, aggression, lactation

タネガタマダニのカナヘビ寄生例追加

According to Kitaoka and Saito (1967), hosts of Ixodes nipponensis are cattle, dog, badger, weasel and wild hare at adult stage, and small rodents and birds at immature stages. Human cases of infestation of this species have been reported 11 cases so far. Recently, Fujita and Takada (1978) found that immature stages of this species infested a common small reptile, Takydromus tachydromoides. The author also collected 5 nymphs from the same species that was captured at Mt. Kora in Kurume City in 1978. This is an additional report of Ixodes nipponensis infesting a small reptile in Kyushu.

Experimental syphilis and serological examination for treponematosis in hares.

Of 202 captive hares studied, many of which had lesions on their external genital organs or testicular atrophy or both, 27% had positive serological tests for syphilis although dark-field examination of extracts of atrophic testes was negative. A total of 12 hares that were nonreactive for the serological test for syphilis was inoculated with Treponema pallidum, 9 intratesticularly and 3 intradermally. Six of the animals inoculated intratesticularly exhibited orchitis after 7 days with an associated accumulation of treponemes. No chancres developed in the intracutaneously inoculated animals during a 27-day period of observation. These results provide additional evidence to support the contention that endemic treponematosis occurs in wild hares and suggest that hares are moderately resistant to experimental infection with T. pallidum.

Texas Instruments' short-term `Idea' programs and its long-shot `Wild Hare' programs stimulate the company's innovators

People make innovations. But one has to create an environment in which people will be stimulated to innovate. And what few of us realize is that one can actually plan and organize systems to spur innovation.

"Yellow fat disease" (pansteatitis) in wild hares in New Zealand.

Abstract Extract “Yellow fat disease” is a disease of certain species of animals, characterized macroscopically by greyish-yellow discoloration and microscopically by inflammatory and degenerative reactions and the occurrence of a characteristic acid-fast pigment in the fat tissue. The terms “nonsuppurative panniculitis”, “pansteatitis”, or “yellow ear disease (chinchilla)” are synonyms.

Colour change of Mountain hares (Lepus timidus scoticus) in north‐east Scotland

A two‐year field study of colour change in a population of Mountain hares showed that the rate of colour change was significantly faster in a warm spring than in a cold one. The same result was found in individually marked wild hares, indicating that the response is not due to differences in age or sex ratios. It is postulated that the white coat is for camouflage, and the duration for which it is worn is correlated with temperature because of the coat's thickness. Moulting is probably timed by daylength, and the rate of moult affected by temperature.

Badgers at my Window, by Phil Drabble. Pelham Books, 30s. - Wild Hares, by Henry Tegner. John Baker, 30s.

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Life history of the Mountain hare (Lepus timidus scoticus) in north‐east Scotland

A general description of the life history of Mountain hares is given, base on a three year field study of about 200 wild hares on a moor near Morven, Aberdeenshire, and laboratory examination of over 360 dead specimens from surrounding areas. Growth and body size, behaviour, range and movements, food and reingestion are described. More detailed information on reproduction, mortality and population counts are presented to give an outline of the population dynamics in this species.

DDT Persistence in Wild Hares and Mink

DDT Persistence in Wild Hares and Mink

Observations on odoriferous and other glands in the Australian wild rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus (L.), and the hare, Lepus europaeus P. I. The Anal gland

The histology and weight relationships of the anal glands from wild rabbits, Oryctolagus cuniculus (L.), and hares, Lepus europaeus P., have been studied. In the rabbit the anal glands are larger in males than in females; sexual dimorphism appears with sexual maturity. The size of the gland is correlated with sexual activity (social status). In hares the differences between sexes are not so obvious. Weight and secretory activity of the anal gland were highest during the breeding season and lowest during the non-breeding season in both the rabbit and the hare. Castration during early life inhibited the growth of the anal glands in male rabbits but not in females. Secretion was inhibited in castrated males but was not affected to the same extent in castrated females. The height of the secretory epithelium, the diameter of tubules and the occurrence of cytoplasmic blebs and processes on the secretory margin were all greater in intensively secreting glands than in lightly secreting ones, but lipid was more copious in less active glands. Lipid seems to be a precursor of the final secretory product which is not distinctively stained by Sudan stains. No changes were seen in the glands from a small sample of pseudopregnant females killed at different intervals after oestrus. The functioning of the anal gland for the purpose of territorial marking is suggested.

Observations on odoriferous and other glands in the Australian wild rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus (L.), and the hare, Lepus europaeus P. II. The Inguinal glands

The histology and weight relationships of the inguinal glands from about 2000 wild rabbits, Oryctolagus cuniculus (L.), and 200 wild hares, Lepus europaeus P., have been studied. The inguinal glands of rabbits were smaller that those of hares. In rabbits the glands were largest in the males, but in hares females had the largest glands. In rabbits the weight and secretory activity of the inguinal glands were highest during the breeding season and lowest during the non-breeding season. Hares showed a similar but less pronounced fluctuation. Castration during early life inhibited the growth of the inguinal glands in male but not in female rabbits. The diameter of tubules and the height of the secretory epithelium in the sudoriferous inguinal glands were greater in sexually highly active (socially dominant) male and female rabbits than in sexually inhibited (subordinate) individuals. Changes in the sebaceous inguinal glands were less obvious, although it appeared that lightly secreting glands contained more lipid. No substantial changes were seen in the glands from a small sample of pseudopregnant female rabbits killed at different intervals after oestrus. The results obtained in the course of the study strengthen the view that the secretion (odour) from the inguinal glands is associated with sexual attraction.

Sex-linkage of erythrocyte glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase in two species of wild hares.

Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase specific to the erythrocytes of each of two wild hares found in Europe was discerned by starch-gel electrophoresis at pH 7.0 and pH 8.6. The single, sharp band of the dehydrogenase of Lepus europaeus was faster than that of L. timidus, at both pH levels. The sex-linkage of this enzyme was tested through reciprocal hybrids between the two species. Each male hybrid had a single band of enzyme identical with that of its mother, while both parental types of this enzyme coexisted in female hybrids. Thus, sex-linkage of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase has been suggested not only in man and in the family Equidae, but now in the family Leporidae of placental mammals as well.