Annette Edwards has a noble goal: to breed the world's biggest rabbit. It now appears that she has succeeded in her silly little dream of lagormorph gigantism with Amy. While most country folk are content with merely growing the world's largest pumpkin or zucchini, Annette has succeeded in creating a rabbit that could easily eat a child.
We agree, this picture is way too big.
Fully extended, Amy the rabbit is 4ft from nose to tail. Good lord. Although the inimitable news source that is the Daily Mail quotes three different weights for Amy, the heaviest is 3.5 stone or roughly, in American, 104 Big Macs, or alternatively, 49lbs.
Amy currently sleeps outside in a dog house. She eats a dog's bowl worth of pellets, two apples, a handful of carrots, half a cabbage and fresh hay each day, which reportedly costs $20 in England (where produce is apparently seven times the price of the US).
Annette's daughter, Bridget, describes her new pet as "horrifying"
In this photo, Amy laments the "normal" rabbit life she must forgo as she is mistaken for furniture by a former playmate.
Credit to Craig McClain of the Weekly World Deep Sea News for forwarding along.
Watch Amy the rabbit feed below the fold:
Thanks to hpeirce for the truly classic vid
Life Science
Comments
I think you've just freaked out Australia a bit there.
Posted by: SpotWeld | March 31, 2008 4:31 PM
Keep going, it needs to be big enough to accept a saddle.
Posted by: Left_Wing_Fox | March 31, 2008 4:48 PM
I don't know man, I think Karl Szmolinsky beat her to it.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/02/02/gallery/bigrabbit_zoom.jpg
There were a lot of news stories about him early last year for breeding these big guys and selling some to North Korea so they could breed them to help combat food shortages - but now it's suspected that some government big wigs just ate them all instead of actually starting the breeding program.
Posted by: paralith | March 31, 2008 4:57 PM
there are few large breeds, for example "Belgian Giants" and they are quite popular in Central Europe. There was a case recently about German breeder providing a number of his giant rabbits to government of KLDR, at discount price, for their another harebrained idea how to deal with famine in countryside. But instead of breeding them, the North-Koreans ate them all at once which made the German breeder rather cross about the whole transaction.
Also, these giant rabbits featured in Teletubbies, the famous psychedelic and laugh-seizure-inducing TV show for toddlers. The tubbie characters are supposed to be toddler-sized but they were actually played by adults so as to make everything look proportional, all flowers, rabbits etc. on the set were giant-sized.
Posted by: milkshake | March 31, 2008 5:11 PM
I think you embedded the wrong YouTube video by mistake. Surely this is the video of Amy feeding you were looking for.
Posted by: HP | March 31, 2008 8:28 PM
Thanks for the hat-tip. ("Oh, no, thank you.")
The funny part is,* I haven't seen Night of the Lepus since it first aired on television when I was nine years old, yet it was the first thing I thought of as I read this post. All I remember about seeing it at the time, was that I wanted to see it very badly, and I was extremely disappointed the actual film. For decades, I didn't understand why I thought it was so important for me to see this film. Then a couple years ago, I found the trailer on the Internet. You see, the trailer is actually a trailer for a pretty good monster movie. It's just that it's apparently a trailer for a different, more entertaining, movie than Night of the Lepus. The difference between the trailer and the movie proved to be a very formative moment in my development as a skeptic.
* Oh, who am I kidding? The funny part is giant, flesh-eating rabbits.
Posted by: HP | March 31, 2008 9:42 PM
Of course, it's not just the giant ones you need to worry about
Posted by: Ed Yong | April 1, 2008 1:49 AM
Yum, yum! Just think how many rabbit pies and rabbit stews you could get out of one of those - to say nothing of the rabbit fur coats! Breed a few thousand of these (shouldn't be difficult as I'm told that the thing rabbits do well is breed) and we could all be wearing fur coats, conscience free, and the endangered white mountain leopards etc., etc., might just stop being endangered! Oh, oh! I also think I might just have triggered the start of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Big Bunnies . . .
Posted by: Mrs Hilary Victoria Minor | April 1, 2008 5:45 AM
What, you've never seen giant Angora bunnies? They make this guy look tiny. Then again, they're mostly fluff.
Posted by: Liesele | April 1, 2008 9:19 AM
Eek! That thing better live outside! I had a rabbit for six years, only about twice the size of a wild rabbit. That guy vandalized everything he could reach -- carpets, clothes, furniture, books, and more. He undermined my bookshelves to the point of collapse (so I replaced them with steel shelves). Not to mention pissing my bed a few times... If I hadn't loved him so much, he'd have been stew several times over!
The worst of it was wires of every sort -- I had/have several computer systems, and I later dubbed that period the War Of The Wires. Somehow, he never got electrocuted by chewing through power cords, but he did take out a couple of fuses, and I had to string my phone line over the tops of cabinets (after I got tired of re-splicing it).
Posted by: David Harmon | April 3, 2008 1:16 PM
You guys are my favorite ScienceBlog and this is another reason why. Think Rabbitzilla could snack on those teacup pigs?
Posted by: Sheril R. Kirshenbaum | April 3, 2008 3:53 PM
Sheril, thank you for your kind words. They came just in time to spare you from the swarm of giant rabbits that we are about to release on North America. When we eventually take over, we have decided to name you Chief Minister of Science and Technology...not an unsubstantial cabinet position, might I say.
Posted by: Benny | April 3, 2008 7:54 PM
Sure. You all laughed at alt.devilbunnies. We tried to warn you. Not laughing now, are you...
Posted by: AWF | April 4, 2008 11:19 AM
I really like to meet this fantastic rabbit. I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
my mail is: reketepaty@hotmail.com
Posted by: patry | June 9, 2008 6:47 PM