Scrub Hare

Fascinating facts about the Scrub Hare

• The Cape scrub hare is currently classified as least-concern, meaning it is not considered threatened. However, a 2004 report warned that its numbers are falling and project a 20 % drop over the next 100 years. This predicted decline is noted as significant but remains below the threshold required to move the species into a threatened category. Conservationists therefore monitor the hare, but the rate of loss alone does not trigger a higher risk status.
• The Cape scrub hare sports a short, bicoloured tail that is black on the dorsal side and white underneath. Its length ranges from 13 to 15 centimetres, a modest size compared with the hare's relatively large body. The tail measurement is listed alongside other colour features such as the off-white eye ring and grey undersides, highlighting its distinctive appearance.
• Adult Cape scrub hares weigh between 3.2 and 4 kilograms, making them relatively heavy for hares. They are generally larger than the African savanna hare, a close relative mentioned in comparative descriptions. Females tend to be the heavier sex, a pattern noted in the species' size data.
• It is confined to a narrow strip of southern Africa, occurring only in southwestern Namibia and South Africa's Western and Northern Cape provinces. The Cape scrub hare is endemic to southern Africa, and lives in southwestern Namibia and the Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces of South Africa.
• Genetic work carried out in 2024 clarified the Cape scrub hare's closest living relatives, identifying the Moroccan hare and the African savanna hare as its nearest kin. Earlier taxonomic confusion, especially south of the Cunene and Zambezi rivers, had obscured these relationships. The species is thought to have diverged from the African savanna hare relatively recently, a split that recent phylogenetic analysis has begun to resolve.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Scrub Hare

In the arid expanse of the African savannah, the scrub hare emerges as a master of stealth, its large, dark eyes scanning the terrain with an air of quiet vigilance as it navigates the scrubby underbrush with long, powerful hind legs. With each stride, its soft, grey-brown fur blends seamlessly into the dusty landscape, allowing it to vanish and reappear with an almost ghostly ease, a testament to its remarkable adaptability in this harsh, sun-baked world. As the sun dips below the horizon, the scrub hare's nocturnal nature awakens, and it embarks on a solo journey, driven by an insatiable appetite for the succulent shoots and leaves that sustain it.

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