40 Fun Facts About Arctic Hare

Like all hares, the Arctic hare gets extra goodness from tough plants by eating what?

Its own droppings, or at least the soft kind: tough fibre is fermented in the gut, passed out as moist pellets and eaten again so the nutrients can finally be absorbed.

An Arctic hare fleeing upright on its hind legs leaves tracks that look like those of what?

A three-legged animal is what the prints suggest: a frightened hare stands up, tucks one front paw against its body and hops away still upright.

Arctic hares sometimes rear up and swat each other with their front paws, a habit named after which sport?

Boxing is part of the Arctic hare's body language, alongside snapping, scratching and laying the ears flat.

On tundra where ponds and streams are often frozen solid, how do Arctic hares get the water they need?

Eating snow is how an Arctic hare drinks, and the supply rarely runs out: it digs through the same snow cover to reach the plants it feeds on.

Which long-eared animals of western North America are true hares like the Arctic hare, despite their name?

Jackrabbits belong to the same genus as the Arctic hare, and they are quick too: they can hold about 40 mph over distance and clear 3 metres in a single leap.

Southern Arctic hares turn brown or grey for summer; what do those in Canada's far north do?

Stay white all year is the far-north habit, because summer there is very short. The pale coat also reflects sunlight, which may keep the hare from overheating by day.

Which hunter is probably the Arctic hare's most successful predator, with even its young catching adults?

Wolves top the list: even pups in their first autumn can catch an adult hare, while smaller hunters such as foxes usually have to settle for the young.

While a big group of Arctic hares rests on the open tundra, one hare skips its nap to do what?

Keep watch: one hare stays alert as a guard while the rest doze. Such gatherings can be a hundred strong or more, though they break up when the mating season arrives.

Dogs and cats walk on bare paw pads; what covers the soles of an Arctic hare's feet instead?

Fur covers the underside of every hare and rabbit foot, so there are no bare pads at all. The hairy soles improve grip when running, handy on ice and packed snow.

How do Arctic hares spend the long polar winter, when their food lies buried under snow?

Awake and foraging: Arctic hares do not hibernate. They dig down to woody plants, mosses and lichens, and save energy with long rests between short bouts of feeding.

A young Arctic hare, like any hare less than a year old, is known by which name?

Leveret is the word for any hare under a year old. Arctic hare mothers can have up to eight at a time, and the youngsters are almost full size within weeks.

An Arctic hare in its full winter coat is almost all one colour, apart from ear tips of which shade?

Black ear tips are the one dark mark on a winter Arctic hare. The rest of the long, thick coat is white, so a hare sitting still on snow is very hard to spot.

Which dwarf woody plant, creeping low across the tundra, is the staple food of the Arctic hare?

Willow, in its ground-hugging Arctic variety, is the staple. The shrub grows only a few inches high, yet it is the northernmost woody plant in the world.

Arctic hares are famous sprinters, but which other way of getting around are they surprisingly good at?

Swimming is a real Arctic hare skill, a surprise in an animal built for running that can hit about 40 mph on land.

Arctic hares escape the wind by digging tunnels, some nearly two metres long, into what?

Snowdrifts make quick shelters: Arctic hares have dug burrows up to 188 cm long in them. A lone hare may also rest in the lee of a big rock, out of the wind.

Why does the Arctic hare have noticeably shorter ears than hares that live in hot, dry country?

To lose less heat: big ears work as radiators that shed body warmth, the last thing a polar animal wants. Its short limbs and small nose save heat in the same way.

Outside Canada, wild Arctic hares are native to which other land, right up to its northern tip?

Greenland has had Arctic hares for a very long time: traces of them there date back nearly 8,000 years.

Which US state has its own big tundra hare, a close relative of Canada's Arctic hare?

Alaska is home to the Alaskan hare, which became a separate species after ice sheets cut its ancestors off from those of the Arctic hare.

A smaller forest cousin of the Arctic hare is named after which winter gear?

Snowshoes gave the snowshoe hare its name, because its oversized hind feet stop it sinking into soft snow. It is also called the varying hare, since its coat changes with the seasons.

Arctic hares dig through crusted snow to reach food using large feet armed with strong what?

Claws on both the front and hind feet do the digging, so an Arctic hare can reach buried plants and scrape out a shelter when the wind gets up.

Newborn rabbits are blind and bald; how do baby Arctic hares, like all hares, come into the world?

Coated, with eyes open, the babies can hide or freeze within a few days. With no burrow to protect them, being ready from the start is what keeps them alive.

Rabbits dig warrens, but hares such as the Arctic hare rest in a shallow hollow known by which name?

A form is just a dip in the ground or a flattened patch of grass, with no tunnel at all. Badgers have setts, squirrels dreys and otters holts.

Which hunter of young Arctic hares has a French name, harfang, said to come from a word for hare-catcher?

Snowy owl is harfang des neiges in French, and the bird mainly targets young hares. It is also the official bird of Quebec.

Which tuft-eared wild cat of Canada's northern forests is listed among the predators of the Arctic hare?

Lynx make the list alongside foxes and hawks, though the cat is far better known for chasing a different, smaller hare through the forest.

What never stops growing throughout an Arctic hare's life, so that it must keep gnawing fibrous plants?

Its front teeth grow nonstop, and chewing wears them down. A hare has an extra pair, too: four upper incisors where a rat or mouse has only two.

Arctic hares fare so badly in which setting that they survive a year and a half at most?

In captivity an Arctic hare lasts eighteen months at best, while the little evidence there is suggests three to five years of life on the open tundra.

Arctic hares share the order Lagomorpha with rabbits and which small, round-eared mountain animals?

Pikas are the only other living family in the order and its smallest members, while the Arctic hare sits at the opposite end of the scale as one of the largest.

A male Arctic hare, like any male hare, is a buck; a female goes by which name?

Doe is the word, as it is for deer and rabbits. Female Arctic hares moult into their summer coats earlier than the males do.

Like the Arctic hare, which plump tundra bird moults each year to stay camouflaged through winter snow?

Ptarmigan moult to match the seasons just as the hare does, and the bird's scientific name, Lagopus, even means hare-foot, a nod to its feathered legs.

Arctic hares have been seen eating meat, including fish and the stomach contents of which dead animals?

Caribou that have been gutted leave a half-digested plant meal behind, an easy find for a hare that otherwise lives on leaves, buds and twigs.

Which Arctic bird of prey cuts Arctic hares in half before carrying them back to its nest?

Gyrfalcon, the largest falcon in the world, carries its catch home in two halves, and in the High Arctic it even builds hare bones and feet into its nest.

Which small weasel preys on young Arctic hares and, like them, moults to stay hidden as seasons change?

Ermine is the name for the stoat in its white winter coat, a pelt once prized for trimming royal and ceremonial robes. Being small, it usually targets young hares.

Arctic hares live as far north as which island, the northernmost in the whole of Canada?

Ellesmere Island reaches closer to the North Pole than any other part of Canada, yet it is big: only slightly smaller than Great Britain.

The southernmost Arctic hares turn brown or grey each summer on which Canadian island?

Newfoundland summers are long enough to make the change worthwhile, and the new coat arrives in order: face and feet first, then ears, shoulders, legs and back.

The Arctic hare's genus, Lepus, is also a constellation sitting just below which famous star figure?

Orion the hunter stands right above the celestial hare, which is often pictured fleeing from him or from his two dogs.

The Arctic in Arctic hare comes from a Greek word meaning near which animal, a northern constellation?

The Bear gave the far north its name: Greek arktikos meant near the Bear, and from there simply northern. The hare's Latin species name, arcticus, carries the same root.

Which shaggy, horned grazer of the far north eats many of the same plants as the Arctic hare?

Muskox herds graze the same sparse tundra plants as the hares. The name comes from the strong musky smell that the males give off in the mating season.

How does the IUCN Red List rate the Arctic hare's risk of dying out across its range?

Least concern is the safest rating on the list. Arctic hares are fairly plentiful, and northern peoples have long hunted them for food and for clothing.

A group of hares, Arctic hares included, can be called a down or which other odd name?

A husk is the old collective noun, though Arctic hares outdo most of their relatives at gathering: flocks of hundreds or even thousands have been reported.

The Arctic hare's name meestapoos, meaning large rabbit, comes from which Indigenous language of Canada?

Cree speakers built the name from meesta, large, and wâpos, rabbit. The hare earns it, as one of the biggest members of the whole rabbit family.