The Ethiopian hare (Lepus fagani) is a species of mammal in the family Leporidae.

[3] It was first described in 1903 by the British mammalogist Oldfield Thomas in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London.

He named it Lepus fagani, after Charles E. Fagan, who was the Assistant Secretary of the British Museum of Natural History.

[5][2] Describing the hare's taxonomy in 1986, Derek Yalden and colleagues wrote "its nomenclatural history has been very confused".

A. Gureev classified it as a subspecies of L. crawshayi, now regarded as a junior synonym of L. microtis, the African savanna hare.

[3][7] In 1972, Gordon Barclay Corbet [de] and Derek Yalden suggested it might be a synonym of L. whytei, now a subspecies of L.

[9] In 1987, Maria Luisa Azzaroli Puccetti reinstated its status as an independent species, because it has a uniform character throughout its distribution.

Flux and Angermann suggested that this isolation in population probably lead to the evolution of the Ethiopian hare as a different species.

[10][4] The Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals also treats it as a subspecies of the Cape hare (Lepus capensis).

[4] The holotype was collected by Edward Degen and its type locality is the Zege Peninsula, Lake Tana, Ethiopia at an elevation of 4,000 ft (1,200 m).

It has a medium-sized, 5 to 8.2 cm (2.0 to 3.2 in) long, fluffy tail which is buff-white below, black above, and buff coloured at the sides.

The dorsal parts of the upper incisor teeth are sloped laterally, forming an angled anterior surface.

[4] The Ethiopian hare is endemic to Africa, and is found in the Afromontane Biozone of Ethiopia, and in the borders of the Sudanian Savanna Biozone; it also occurs west of the Rift Valley, in the Ethiopian Highlands,[4] and abundantly found around the Lake Tana in Ethiopia.

[17] Since 1996, the status of the Ethiopian hare has been data deficient on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species.