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The jackalope (Lepus Carnivorinae Anteoculini) is a fictitious cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope (or sometimes a goat or deer), and is usually portrayed as a rabbit with antlers. It is also called the called the Antelabbit or "horny bunny". Contrived mounted heads of jackalopes may be for sale in some novelty stores, particularly in the American West and great plains and on the www; postcards with faked photos showing jackalopes are also published. The jackalope story is sometimes used by locals in these areas to play tricks on tourists.
The jackalope legend in the U.S is attributed by the New York Times to Douglas Herrick (1920-2003) of Douglas, Wyoming, in 1932. Postcards showing jackalopes were also sold in the U.S. in the 1930s. Horned rabbits abound in European and, particularly, German and Austrian, legends as the raurackl, rasselbock and wolpertinger. All of these legends are probably inspired by rabbits infected with a virus (Shope papillomavirus) which causes hornlike growths in various places on their heads and other parts of the body. The many illustrations of horned hares shown in scholarly works by European naturalists in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries (the Encyclopédie Méthodique, for example), were probably similarly inspired.
A jackalope character was featured in the U.S. television show America's Funniest People, where it would laugh a lot while playing mean tricks on people.
The comic strip Bloom County had as one of its characters Rosebud the Basselope, a cross between a basset hound and an antelope.
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