You've probably seen them. Those dusty, taxidermied heads hanging in roadside diners or kitschy souvenir shops across the American West. They look like a bad joke. A jackrabbit's head with a miniature set of deer antlers glued on top. It's the "jackalope," a creature that occupies a weird space between campfire tall tales and actual biology. Most people just laugh it off as a tourist trap. But there's a darker, much more fascinating truth behind the myth of jack rabbits with antlers.
It isn't just a hoax created by bored taxidermists in the 1930s.
Sure, the "jackalope" name was coined by Douglas Herrick in Wyoming, but the sightings of horned rabbits go back centuries. Before it was a postcard icon, it was a medical mystery. If you saw a rabbit with growths that looked like horns in the wild, you weren't hallucinating. You were looking at a very sick animal.
The Horrifying Truth of Shope Papilloma Virus
Nature is rarely as whimsical as a gift shop. In 1933, a virologist named Richard E. Shope started looking into reports of "horned" rabbits in Iowa. He didn't find a new species. He found a virus. This wasn't some magical mutation; it was the Shope Papilloma Virus (SPV).
Basically, the virus causes hard, keratinous tumors to grow on a rabbit's face and head. Keratin is the same stuff in your fingernails and a rhino’s horn. In these rabbits, the tumors can grow so large and rigid that they look exactly like antlers. They can be black, brown, or grey, and they often branch out in ways that mimic a buck's rack.
It's pretty grim.
These "horns" aren't for defense or mating. They're obstructive. In many cases, the tumors grow so large that they prevent the rabbit from eating. The animal eventually starves to death. While the folklore portrays the jackalope as a fast, clever trickster, the reality of jack rabbits with antlers is a struggle for survival against a debilitating skin cancer.
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Why the Myth Refuses to Die
Why do we keep talking about them? Humans love a mystery. We’ve been documenting "horned hares" since at least the 16th century. European natural history texts, like the Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique, featured illustrations of the Lepus cornutus. These weren't intended as fantasies; the scientists of the time genuinely believed they were a rare subspecies.
Douglas Herrick just capitalized on it.
In 1932, Herrick and his brother returned from a hunting trip in Douglas, Wyoming. They tossed a jackrabbit carcass into their taxidermy shop, and it happened to slide right up against a pair of deer antlers. Herrick thought it looked cool. He mounted it. Then he sold it. Suddenly, Douglas, Wyoming, became the "Jackalope Capital of the World."
You can still get a "jackalope hunting license" there today. The town even has a giant statue of the creature. It's a massive part of the local economy, even if everyone knows it’s a gag. But that’s the thing about North American folklore—it’s often a blend of legitimate biological anomalies and a dry, Western sense of humor.
A Breakthrough for Human Health
Here is the part that most people get wrong. They think the jackalope is just a footnote in a book of tall tales. Actually, it changed modern medicine.
Richard Shope’s discovery of the virus in these jack rabbits with antlers was a massive deal for oncology. It was one of the first times scientists realized that a virus could cause cancer in mammals. Before this, the link between viruses and tumors was mostly speculative or observed in birds.
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Researchers like Francis Peyton Rous (who later won a Nobel Prize) used Shope’s work to dig deeper into how viruses can trigger cellular changes. This line of research eventually led to the development of the HPV (Human Papillomavirus) vaccine.
So, in a weird way, that weird souvenir on the wall of a Montana bar is a distant relative of life-saving medical science. Every time you hear about cervical cancer prevention, you're looking at a legacy that started with people wondering why some rabbits had horns.
Identifying the "Real" Jackalope in the Wild
If you’re out hiking in the high plains or the desert and you spot one, don't try to catch it. First off, jackrabbits are incredibly fast—they can hit speeds of 40 miles per hour and leap 10 feet in a single bound. Secondly, a rabbit with SPV is a wild animal in distress.
How can you tell the difference between a "fake" mount and a rabbit with the virus?
- Symmetry: Fake jackalopes have perfectly symmetrical deer antlers. SPV tumors are chaotic. They grow in clumps and often look more like twisted bark than smooth bone.
- Location: Antlers on a deer grow from specific pedicles on the skull. In rabbits with SPV, the "horns" can sprout from the chin, around the eyes, or on the ears.
- Texture: Real antlers are bone covered in velvet (initially). SPV growths are jagged, crusty, and look like massive warts because, technically, that’s what they are.
The virus is usually spread by ticks and mosquitoes. It’s mostly found in Cottontails and Jackrabbits in the Midwest and Southwest. It doesn't typically jump to humans, but you still shouldn't handle a sick animal.
The Cultural Weight of the Horned Hare
We see this everywhere now. From World of Warcraft (the Wolpertinger) to Pixar shorts (Boundin'), the jackalope is a staple of the "fearsome critter" genre of American folklore. It sits right next to the Bigfoot and the Mothman, but it has more grounding in reality than either of those.
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It represents the American West's obsession with the "tall tale." In the 19th century, "frontier lies" were a way of testing the gullibility of newcomers. Telling a "greenhorn" about the elusive jack rabbits with antlers was a rite of passage. If you believed it, you were an outsider. If you laughed, you were one of the guys.
How to Handle the Legend Today
If you're a collector or just someone fascinated by the weirdness of it all, there's a right way to engage with this.
- Support Local Artists: If you want a jackalope mount, buy one from taxidermists in Wyoming or South Dakota who keep the tradition alive. It’s a folk art form.
- Observe Responsibly: If you see a rabbit in the wild with these growths, contact your local fish and wildlife department. They track the prevalence of SPV to monitor the health of local rabbit populations.
- Respect the Science: Remember that these animals helped us understand cancer. It’s not just a joke; it’s a biological phenomenon that had a massive impact on virology.
The jackalope isn't real, but the horned rabbit absolutely is. One is a product of human imagination and a bit of glue, while the other is a testament to the strange, often harsh realities of the natural world. Next time you see one, you'll know the difference between the myth and the mutation.
If you are traveling through the West, check out the Pioneer Museum in Douglas, Wyoming. They have some of the earliest "authenticated" jackalope mounts and a wealth of information on how the town embraced the legend. It's a perfect example of how a biological tragedy became a cultural icon. Just don't expect to find any real antlers in the brush.
Key Actions for Enthusiasts
- Visit Douglas, Wyoming: Get your "official" hunting license at the Chamber of Commerce.
- Study the Shope Virus: Read Richard Shope’s original 1933 paper if you want to see the actual medical foundations.
- Check Vintage Prints: Look for 16th-century German woodcuts of the "Wolpertinger"—it proves the myth isn't just American.
- Check Local Wildlife Reports: Use apps like iNaturalist to see where sightings of "horned" rabbits are being logged by citizen scientists.
The story of jack rabbits with antlers is really a story about how we explain the things we don't understand. We took a scary virus and turned it into a whimsical legend. That’s just what humans do. We make sense of the world through stories, even if those stories have a little bit of taxidermy glue holding them together.