SPRING 2022 | THE SCIENTIST 77READING FRAMESM
ost of us have likely seen them
somewhere: those cute but
strange taxidermy mounts of
a jackrabbit unaccountably sporting a
handsome pair of horns or antlers. Or,
you may have seen the image of this
whimsical horned bunny on a post-
card, keychain, shot glass, or another of
the innumerable items of kitsch it has
inspired. This is the fabled jackalope,
an imagined creature that is iconic in
the folklore and popular culture of the
American West.
The first jackalope hoax mount was
created during the Great Depression by
Douglas and Ralph Herrick, two young
brothers who lived on a homestead outside
the small town of Douglas, Wyoming. The
Herrick boys sold that first horned rab-
bit for $10 to a local entrepreneur, who
displayed it above the bar of his hotel in
Douglas, where it became the talk of the
town. The Herricks, who were just having
a little fun practicing their rudimentary
taxidermy skills, could not have dreamed
that their hybrid bunny would go on to
become the most famous and beloved taxi-
dermy hoax in the world.
In The New York Times obituary for
Douglas, who died on January 6, 2003,
Ralph claimed that he and his brother
had fabricated that now-legendary first
jackalope in 1932. According to Ralph’s
version of the jackalope origin story, they
came home from hunting and tossed a
dead jackrabbit onto the floor of their
shop, where it happened to slide up
against a pair of deer antlers. In that
moment, the hybrid animal came to life in
Douglas’s imagination, and he exclaimed,
“Let’s mount that thing!”
The Herrick brothers are not the sole
inventors of the jackalope-like creature,
however. Research for my book On the
Trail of the Jackalope led me to hornedrabbits in the folklore of cultures around
the globe. Indigenous peoples in North
America, Africa, and Asia have long told
mythic tales of horned hares, and even
some Buddhist sutras mention horned
rabbits—as does a cosmography promi-
nent in the 13th-century Islamic world.
In my book, I document the wide range of
jackalope predecessors, including kauyu-
maris, wampfundlas, dilldapps, wolper-
tingers, and raurakls.
The horned hare was also an enduring
source of fascination for early naturalists.
From the 16th through the 19th centuries,
horned rabbits appeared in the text and
illustrations of natural histories produced
across Europe, and for more than 200
years the horned hare was taxonomized
as Lepus cornutus, which was thought to
be a distinct species. It is probable that the
horned hares appearing in world folklore
were inspired by actual virus-stricken rab-
bits that develop horn-like growths, a phe-
nomenon discovered by virologist Richard
Shope in 1932—the very same year that
Douglas and Ralph sold their taxidermied
jackrabbit to the local hotel owner.
Laboring alone in his laboratory
at the Rockefeller Institute for Medi-
cal Research in Princeton, New Jersey
(precursor of the Rockefeller Univer-
sity in New York), Shope was fascinated
by inexplicable tumors he found grow-
ing on cottontail rabbits. Hypothesizing
that the “warty rabbits” suffered from
an unknown viral disease, he set out to
determine what it might be. He would
remove the diseased rabbits’ growths,
pulverize the material into a fine paste,
and suspend it in a saline solution which
he would run through a centrifuge. He’d
then decant the supernatant fluid and
strain it through a porcelain filter so
fine as to prevent bacteria from passing
through. Finally, he’d inoculate healthyrabbits with the strained fluid. Within a
week, lesions would begin to appear on
a few rabbits, and soon all of the experi-
mentally inoculated animals would show
signs of disease, with many of the rabbits’
budding growths developing into long,
black horns. A virus that would later be
named Shope papillomavirus had pro-
duced the odd growths. In identifying
the cause of the rabbits’ “horns,” Shope
had documented the first virus-induced
cancer in a mammal. The implications of
his discovery would prove monumental.
The Journal of Experimental Med-
icine published Shope’s groundbreak-
ing article, “Infectious Papillomatosis
of Rabbits,” in 1933. However, Shope,
who was busy with a variety of prom-
ising projects, soon handed his rabbitOn the Trail of the Jackalope
How horned rabbits led the way to the HPV vaccineBY MICHAEL P. BRANCHPegasus Books, March 2022