The Jackalope: America's Mythical Horned Hare

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Only in America… Maybe. Here we delve further from a key element in Baraka Commos’ rituals and life. Material that loosely led to a key subject within the movie “Castigation.”

The Definitive Guide To The Jackalope: America’s Mythical Horned Hare

In a dusty roadside lodge in Wyoming, I once encountered the legendary jackalope – a jackrabbit’s mounted head sprouting antlers. This iconic half-rabbit, half-antelope creature has been a staple of Western kitsch for nearly a century. It was famously “created by taxidermist Douglas Herrick” during the Depression, when he and his brother mounted deer antlers on a jackrabbit carcass and sold the result to a local hotel [1] [2]. Since then, jackalope imagery – postcards, novelty mugs, license plates – has seeped into American pop culture as a tongue-in-cheek emblem of the frontier. Yet the truth behind those horns is not a cryptid lurking in sagebrush, but an interplay of folklore, biology, and even cutting-edge science [3] [4].

The jackalope’s origin story is well-documented. In 1932 the Herrick brothers of Douglas, Wyoming, returning from a jackrabbit hunt, tossed a carcass beside a pair of deer antlers. Douglas saw a “vision” and exclaimed “Let’s mount that thing,” producing the first jackalope trophy [1]. They sold that first horned jackrabbit to the La Bonte Hotel for $10, and it became the talk of town [5] [6]. Locals found the bizarre mount hilarious – and the brothers soon turned out dozens more for bars and tourists [7]. By the 1970s, with Western tourism booming, the jackalope business had snowballed: Ralph Herrick and his son were producing “a thousand mounted jackalopes each year,” selling them across Wyoming and beyond [8].

This Wyoming tale is only one chapter in a much larger folklore. Horned hares appear in cultures worldwide. In 16th–18th century Europe, naturalists and artists actually believed in a creature called Lepus cornutus, the horned hare [9] [10]. Zoologists like Conrad Gessner and Johannes Jonston wrote about it, and Joris Hoefnagel illustrated a rabbit with horns in 16th-century bestiaries [9] [11]. Even satirists like Rabelais mentioned horned rabbits in Gargantua and Pantagruel. In Bavaria the wolpertinger – a hare with antlers (often with wings, too) – became a staple of Alpine taverns, and Sweden’s skvader combined a hare’s body with a grouse’s tail. On World War II-era highway signs in Sundsvall one even “warn[ed] drivers for skvaders on the road” [12] [11].

More astonishingly, horned hare legends are found in Asia and the Americas. Medieval Islamic manuscripts describe a one-horned rabbit, and Huichol Indians of Mexico have long told of a deer who stole its antlers from a horned rabbit as mythical twins [10] [13]. Across cultures the horned hare recurs: the wolpertinger, the Austrian raurakl, the Thuringian rasselbock, the Palatinate elwedritsche – each is a composite critter mixing rabbits or hares with other animals [11] [12]. These legends were often treated as fact: 17th-century natural histories included “animal hybrids” like horned hares as real species, until skepticism mounted by the late 18th century [10].

Despite centuries of myth, real “horned rabbits” do exist – but as victims of a virus, not as a magic species. In 1932–33 virologist Richard E. Shope studied “warty rabbits” shot in Iowa and Kansas and discovered the culprit: a papillomavirus causing keratinized tumors that protruded like black horns [14] [4]. Infected cottontails grew bizarre horn-like growths on their heads and bodies; Shope isolated the virus (now called Shope papillomavirus) and showed it could induce cancerous growths [15] [16]. This rabbit virus became the first known oncovirus in mammals, a breakthrough that opened the door to modern cancer virology and ultimately the HPV vaccine [15] [17].

Shope papilloma virus (SPV): Infects rabbits and hares, causing horn-like fibrous tumors, primarily on the head [16]. First identified in 1933 by Richard Shope.

Host specificity: Found in wild cottontails, brush rabbits, jackrabbits, snowshoe hares, even domestic rabbits [16]. Does not infect other species or humans [18].

Effect: Growths can be benign keratin tumors or malignant carcinomas. In wild rabbits they often regress without ill effect, but in pet rabbits they become cancerous more often [19].

Human relevance: Shope’s work showed viruses can cause cancer in mammals [17], paving the way for understanding HPV and developing antiviral cancer vaccines [15] [17].

Modern sightings: Outbreaks of SPV (sometimes sensationalized as “tentacled rabbits”) surface occasionally (a Colorado spike went viral on social media in 2025) [20] [21]. Wildlife agencies reassure the public the virus is long-known and harmless to people [18] [21].

Indeed, many jackalope tales trace back to Shope’s rabbits. The Smithsonian notes that sightings of these “Frankenstein” rabbits likely fueled the jackalope legend [22]. A rabbit with two black horn-like warts might look, from a distance, like a new species – a “magical beast” born of nature. Yet the tumors are not biological antlers at all, but a disease. Unlike deer antlers (bony structures shed yearly), SPV horns are keratin growths that remain fixed [16] [23]. No genetic mutant has been found: there is no natural jackrabbit–antelope hybrid; cross-breeding such distant species is biologically impossible.

Biologically, jackalopes are assembled from two unrelated animals. The “jack” part refers to the jackrabbit – actually a hare by taxonomy, not a rabbit at all [24]. (In fact, “rabbit” and “hare” are often misused: classic rabbits are smaller, burrowing animals, born blind and hairless after a short 30-day gestation, whereas hares are larger, long-eared, born furred with eyes open after ~42 days [25].) Hares run in open fields, rabbits hide in brush. True jackrabbits (e.g. the white-tailed jackrabbit of Wyoming) are hares that can bolt at 45 mph across sage flats. The “antelope” horns on a jackalope are usually deer antlers or pronghorn horns. (Pronghorns – often miscalled “American antelope” – are not true antelopes but unique relatives of giraffes [26].) In craft mounts, taxidermists screw deer or pronghorn horns onto a jackrabbit’s skull. The result has a rabbit’s ears and eyes below branching antlers that never belonged to it.

Key animal differences:

– Jackrabbit (a hare): large, long ears, born fully furred, nesting above ground.
– Rabbit: smaller, short ears, born blind hairless, burrows underground [25].
– Pronghorn (“American antelope”): slim, antelope-like but closer to giraffes, with permanent forked horns [26].
– Deer: broader, shed-and-regrow antlers.
– Virus-horned rabbits: rabbits with SPV may carry one or two black horn-like warts [16], but these are tumors, not bone or horn tissue. They can grow grotesque but are fragile (and often fatal).

Horned Hares Around the World

Folklore fills the gap between jackalope kitsch and wild biology. In African, Asian and Native American traditions, horned leporids have arisen independently as symbols or monsters. In North America, plains Cree legends speak of Wamputi-si, a mysterious horned hare. Pacific Northwest stories mention Ka-yu-ma-reesh, an ominous antlered rabbit. Medieval Indians of Persia described a unicorn-like one-horned hare, while early Chinese and Islamic texts hint at horned rabbits. Even in Mesoamerica, the Huichol say a deer tricked a lightning-born rabbit out of its antlers. These tales likely spring from the same seed: humans encountering unusual rabbits (perhaps ill ones) and letting their imaginations run wild [27] [28].

Europe alone had dozens of variants: the aforementioned Wolpertinger (Bavarian Alpine forests), the Rasselbock (Thuringian creature), the Elwedritsche (Palatinate phantom bird-hare). Swedish taxidermists jokingly crafted the skvader in 1918, grafting a wood grouse’s tail onto a hare body (the town of Sundsvall still serves “skvader” pancakes) [11] [12]. Pliny the Elder even recorded a winged “rabbit-bird” from the Alps [11]. The parallels are uncanny – many cultures indulged a bit of taxidermist’s whimsy or misinterpreted odd rabies-like infections as giant hares.

Yet by the 19th century science caught up. Investigators like Gaspar Schott and Jacob Theodor Klein in the 1600s published drawings of the horned hare. By the late 1700s, however, zoologists were skeptical: the last major 18th-century natural history to list Lepus cornutus was Bonnaterre’s 1789 encyclopedia, after which the creature faded into myth [29]. (An 1817 French natural history even hedged, calling the horned hare “possibly real but very rare” – a nod to continued uncertainty [29].) Historians now believe those old “horned hares” in museums were hoaxes or misidentified specimens, but some suspect yet another cause: Shope’s virus might have existed unnoticed for centuries, causing sporadic horned rabbits that fuelled folklore [28] [4].

The Jackalope in Culture and Kitsch

In modern times, the jackalope has become an American symbol of tall tales and roadside humor. Douglas, Wyoming proudly calls itself “Home of the Jackalope” with an 8-foot statue and a festival each June [30]. The Chamber of Commerce there even prints novelty “Jackalope Hunting Licenses” valid on the fictional date June 31 – hours 12 – 2 am – for people “with an IQ greater than 50 but not over 72” [30]. Retailers across the West sell jackalope keychains, postcards, and taxidermy trophies. One craftsman in Rapid City, South Dakota, has made and sold thousands of resin jackalope mounts and supplies Cabela’s stores with them [31].

Politicians have played along. Wyoming legislators repeatedly introduced bills to make the jackalope the state’s official mythic creature (each time dying in committee) [32]. In 2014, the state chose a whimsical jackalope logo for its lottery tickets [33]. Visitors to Wall Drug in South Dakota can sit for photos next to a leaping jackalope statue. Bands, breweries and cartoonists across the world have picked up the image – the Jackalope appears on album covers, in children’s books, and even in a Pixar short [34].

Legend has piled on absurd “facts” about jackalope behavior. Folklorist Richard Dorson recorded tales of Wyoming jackalopes that dash so fast they “churn up dust devils”, imitate cowboys’ campfire songs, and become fierce when trapped [35] [36]. Supposedly only lightning storms inspire jackalope mating [37], and their milk is a coveted aphrodisiac – if you can get a horned doe to let you milk her [23] [36]. Tour guides have said hunters should wear stovepipes on their legs to avoid jackalope gore [38]. In humor magazines, shooting a jackalope can only be done by slipping it whiskey until it falls over inebriated [39].

Tall-tale traits: Jackalopes are said to talk (throw their voice) and mimic human sounds, even singing tenor round cowboy campfires [35]. They reportedly mate only in lightning storms, explaining their scarcity [37]. Some jokes advise wearing stovepipe pants to avoid their horns [38] or catching one by getting it drunk with whiskey [39]. And, yes, souvenir shops in Douglas sell “doe milk” from jackalope, though as one New York Times humorist quipped, milking a horned rabbit is “fraught with risk” [38].

In short, the jackalope thrives on the border of fact and fiction. As folklorist Steve Voynick put it, dealers “delighted in feeding tourists a line of manure a mile long, all while selling ‘genuine’ specimens guaranteed to wow the folks back home” [40]. For many Americans, jackalopes are a benign reminder of our appetite for stories and whimsy – a “nothingburger,” as legend has it, of hyperlocal marketing.

Myth and Reality, Side by Side

For all its absurdity, the jackalope myth has an unexpected virtue: it connects culture and science. As Professor Michael Branch observes, the jackalope “does bear a real relationship” to nature – the very virus-infected rabbits that made the legend possible [3]. Recent social media scares over “Frankenstein rabbits” with tentacles merely rehashed this old tale (the media even dubbed SPV-infected bunnies “the world’s scariest rabbits”) [18] [21]. In each case, a kernel of truth – real rabbits with tumors – gets exaggerated into viral myth.

Yet unlike many cryptids, the jackalope’s reality is scientifically settled. There is no mysterious new species to discover. If one searches for a horned lagomorph, one finds cancer researchers, not cryptozoologists. And that is a strange twist: the “real” jackalope helped save lives. Shope’s investigations into horned rabbits launched the field of viral oncology, ultimately contributing to the HPV vaccine that prevents cervical and other cancers [15] [17]. In this way, the lineage of the jackalope runs through medical history.

Balance comes in acknowledging both sides of the story. To the locals of Douglas and beyond, the jackalope is a cherished jest and small-town pride – an emblem of the absurd frontier spirit [1] [40]. To scientists, it is a cautionary tale in pattern-seeking: sometimes seeing a legend is as simple as spotting a sick rabbit under the right light. And to the modern reader, it is a mirror of our age of information: in 2025, earnest social media posts quickly amplified a viral outbreak of rabbit tumors into a doomsday scenario, just as mid-20th-century tourists were hoodwinked into buying jackalope trophies.

In the end, the jackalope sits squarely between myth and reality. As Branch wrote, the real-world chain of events behind the jackalope – from whimsical taxidermy to viral discovery – “may be even more fantastic than the mythical jackalope itself” [41]. Its legacy is one of creative imagination harnessed by scientific understanding. The image of a rabbit with horns endures because it delights us, but it endures especially because it reminds us that folklore often hides a grain of truth. In chasing the jackalope, we learn not only about prairie lore, but about viruses and visionaries – a reminder that sometimes the most improbable stories leave the most real impact.

Verified historical and scientific accounts of the jackalope legend and related biology have been drawn from interviews, journalistic features, encyclopedias, and scientific articles [1] [15] [3] [4] [25] (see citations above). All folklore quotations and tall tales are drawn from reputable secondary sources documenting Western tradition [1] [38]. They claim that no evidence of an actual jackrabbit–antelope hybrid has been found; available data comes from virology studies of rabbits and from documented taxidermy and folklore. But they also say Nessie/the Loch Ness monster don’t exist, so what do they know?