Most are fast runners with long, powerful hind legs, and large ears that dissipate body heat.

Members of the Lepus genus are considered true hares, distinguishing them from rabbits which make up the rest of the Leporidae family.

[4][5] The five species of jackrabbits found in central and western North America are able to run at 65 km/h (40 mph) over longer distances, and can leap up to 3 m (10 ft) at a time.

[8][9] Hares are generally larger than rabbits, with longer ears, and have black markings on their fur.

Other rabbits and hares live and give birth in simple forms (shallow depression or flattened nest of grass) above the ground.

Young hares are adapted to the lack of physical protection, relative to that afforded by a burrow, by being born fully furred and with eyes open.

[12] Easily digestible food is processed in the gastrointestinal tract, expelling the waste as regular feces.

For nutrients that are harder to extract, hares, like all lagomorphs, ferment fiber in the cecum and expel the mass as cecotropes, which they ingest again, a practice called cecotrophy or refection.

Lagos stifado (Λαγός στιφάδο)—hare stew with pearl onions, vinegar, red wine, and cinnamon—is a much-prized dish enjoyed in Greece and Cyprus and communities in the diaspora.

According to Jewish tradition, the hare is among mammals deemed not kosher, and therefore not eaten by observant Jews.

[17] The blood of a freshly killed hare can be collected for consumption in a stew or casserole in a cooking process known as jugging.

First the entrails are removed from the hare carcass before it is hung in a larder by its hind legs, which causes blood to accumulate in the chest cavity.

Seven of ten stated they would refuse to eat jugged hare if it were served at the house of a friend or a relative.

Now pop mythology associates the hare with the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre as an explanation for the Easter Bunny, but is wholly modern in origin and has no authentic basis.

[citation needed] In European tradition, the hare symbolises the two qualities of swiftness[31] and timidity.

The image has been traced from Christian churches in the English county of Devon right back along the Silk Road to China, via western and eastern Europe and the Middle East.