The Abyssinian hare (''Lepus habessinicus'') is a species of

mammal A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the Class (biology), class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three ...

in the family

Leporidae Leporidae () is the family of rabbits and hares, containing over 70 species of extant mammals in all. The family name comes from "Lepus", hare in Latin. Together with the pikas, the Leporidae constitute the mammalian order Lagomorpha. Leporidae ...

. It is almost entirely restricted to the nations of the

Horn of Africa The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...

, though it extends marginally into eastern

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

and may also occur in far northern

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

Taxonomy

It has been suggested it should be considered

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

with the

Cape hare The Cape hare (''Lepus capensis''), also called the brown hare and the desert hare, is a hare native to Africa and Arabia extending into India. Taxonomy The Cape hare was one of the many Mammalia in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, mammal ...

(''L. capensis''), but is considered a separate species based on (presumed) sympatry in their distributions.

Description

The Abyssinian hare resembles other hares in its general appearance, long limbs and large ears. It grows to a head-and-body length of between . The fur is soft and dense. The upper parts are a grizzled silvery grey, with some black on the shoulder, back and rump. The hairs on the back are about long and have greyish-white shafts, then a black band topped by a white or pale buff band, and often a black tip. The flanks are paler, the individual hairs having white shafts. The underparts are white, the fur being less dense than on the back. A thin cinnamon band separates the flanks from the underparts. The chin is whitish, and some individuals have whitish eyerings. The ears are very large, silvery-brown externally and whitish-buff inside. There is a black margin round the tips of the ears and a white fringe round the lower parts of the margin. The tail is long, black above and white below.

Distribution and habitat

The Abyssinian hare is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to the Horn of Africa, being present in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. It occurs in

savannah A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...

, grassland and

steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the tropical and subtropica ...

, as well as desert and semi-arid conditions where some scrubby vegetation is present to provide cover. It occurs to altitudes of about , and even higher in Ethiopia.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q336528 Lepus Mammals described in 1832 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxa named by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg Taxa named by Wilhelm Hemprich