Easter Rabbit

Katie Edwards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Easter Bunny

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence. In fact, the symbol of a circle of three hares joined by their ears has been found in a number of churches in Devon.

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Rabbits and hares have also been associated with Mary, mother of Jesus, for centuries. Their association with virgin birth comes from the fact that hares — often conflated mistakenly with rabbits — are able to produce a second litter of offspring while still pregnant with the first. Mary holds the rabbit in the foreground, signifying both her virginity and fertility. The rabbit is white to convey her purity and innocence. First it smells you, then it escapes, then it comes back, and you feel like caressing it, playing with it.

10 Things You May Not Know About the Easter Bunny | Mental Floss

A girl resembles a bunny. Indeed, some folklorists have suggested that the Easter Bunny derives from an ancient Anglo-Saxon myth, concerning the fertility goddess Ostara. The Encyclopedia Mythica explains that:. Ostara is the personification of the rising sun. In that capacity she is associated with the spring and is considered a fertility goddess.

She is the friend of all children and to amuse them she changed her pet bird into a rabbit. This rabbit brought forth brightly coloured eggs, which the Greek goddess gave to children as gifts. From her name and rites the festival of Easter is derived. The myth of Ostara, then, has become a popular theory for the derivation of the Easter Bunny — although it is a contested one.

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Either way, it seems that the association between the Easter Bunny and Ostara began with the 8th-century scholar the Venerable Bede in his work The Reckoning of Time. There is, however, no other historical evidence to support his statement. The earliest reference to an egg-toting Easter Bunny can be found in a late 16th-century German text In the 18th century, German immigrants took the custom of the Easter Bunny with them to the United States and, by the end of the 19th century, sweet shops in the eastern states were selling rabbit-shaped candies, prototypes of the chocolate bunnies we have today.

By , the first story about a rabbit laying eggs and hiding them in a garden was published. These legends were brought to the United States in the s, when German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania Dutch country, according to the Center for Children's Literature and Culture.

The tradition of making nests for the rabbit to lay its eggs in soon followed.

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Eventually, nests became decorated baskets and colorful eggs were swapped for candy, treats and other small gifts. So, while you're scarfing down chocolate bunnies I hear chocolate is good for you! Easter Sunday seems just about the right time to offer readers a bunny gallery.

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These adorable, swift little mammals make it hard to look away. So enjoy this collection of long- and floppy-eared cuteness. Glowing Bunny Born in Turkey.

A handful of baby bunnies! We're focusing on smaller rabbits today, but larger species can top out at some 20 inches long and weigh about 4 pounds.

Easter Symbols and Traditions

Rabbits don't eat meat but they find plenty of other things to munch upon -- various grasses, lettuce, leafy weeds, and other plants. Their attempt to form a perfect circle was laudable, if a bit geometrically flawed. Bunnies on the Moon? This bunny is trying to become a stealth bunny -- "maybe they won't see me Cottontails will run in a zigzag fashion -- at up to 18 miles per hour -- when trying to evade a predator.

If ever a bunny could strike an "Oh, bother" pose, this might be it. A peep chick and a bunny -- the best of Easter friends. Rabbits were originally classified as rodents, but in their dignity was restored when they joined the "lagomorphs" order, which doesn't. Most Amazing Animal Friendships: Just give it awhile. A rabbit's ears can be more than 4 inches long. Rabbit litters range from about 4 to 12 babies.