Arnold Zwicky's Blog

In the Beautiful Farmyard set, a card for the lionhead rabbit:

(This one is gray; they come in many colors.)

Lionhead rabbit is one of the newer breeds of domestic rabbits in the United States … The Lionhead rabbit has a wool mane encircling the head, reminiscent of a male lion, hence the name.

… The Lionhead rabbit originated in Belgium. It is reported to have been produced by breeders trying to breed a long coated dwarf rabbit by crossing a miniature Swiss Fox and a Belgian dwarf. This resulted in a genetic mutation causing wool to appear around the head and on the flanks. This gene has come to be known as the “mane” gene. (Wikipedia link)

“A cross between a Swiss Fox and a Belgian dwarf”: beautiful.

This entry was posted on November 15, 2013 at 10:00 am and is filed under Language and animals, Names. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.