In the United States, a troubling illness is affecting rabbit populations, transforming these once cherished holiday gifts into something more akin to a Halloween fright.
While the comparison might not be the most accurate, let’s delve deeper.
The emergence of a ‘Frankenstein’ rabbit has startled the online community, though this creature wasn’t crafted by a scientist in a laboratory during a stormy night.
Instead, the presence of ‘tentacles’ on these animals’ faces results from a much more somber reality.
This phenomenon is due to the cottontail rabbit papilloma virus (CRPV), also known as Shope papilloma virus. This oncogenic DNA virus is transmitted by mosquitoes and ticks that bite the rabbit’s skin.
Essentially, the virus induces skin tumors in rabbits, which can progress to cancer, specifically squamous cell carcinomas.
When rabbits contract this disease, it can be deadly. While some may recover within a year, others face a prolonged and painful decline.
The situation becomes dire if these ‘horns’ grow near the rabbit’s mouth and eyes, potentially leading to blindness and an inability to eat, ultimately causing starvation.
Although biting insects are the primary transmitters, the virus can also spread through direct contact among rabbits, such as sharing food, water, or bedding.
According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), the tumors typically don’t harm rabbits unless they impede essential functions like eating and drinking.
“The growths have no significant effects on wild rabbits unless they interfere with eating/drinking. Most infected cottontails can survive the viral infection, after which the growths will go away,” it writes.
“For this reason, CPW does not recommend euthanizing rabbits with papillomas unless they are interfering with the rabbit’s ability to eat and drink.”
Though humans cannot contract the virus, CPW advises avoiding contact with infected rabbits.
These peculiar-looking rabbits bear a resemblance to the American folklore creature known as the ‘jackalope,’ a mythical jackrabbit with antelope-like horns.
For years, students have been taught that the jackalope is a fictional creature, yet the discovery of CRPV in Midwestern America in 1933 by Richard E. Shope suggests there might be a kernel of truth in the legend.
When Suzanne Peurach from the US Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center stumbled upon a rabbit specimen with horns, she was taken aback.
“When I pulled the rabbit out of the box, I thought this must be a joke. I went to school in Albuquerque [New Mexico] and everywhere you go there are jackalopes in biology professors’ offices and even being sold in stores,” she told Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, in Washington, DC.
“Those are fake animals, the result of people sewing taxidermy rabbits and deer antlers together. This rabbit was definitely not one of those.”