Chinese hare

The Chinese hare, Lepus sinensis, is a coarse-furred hare found in southeastern China, Taiwan and Vietnam. It is small compared with other hares in and around China and can be recognised by its brown back, chest and tail fur, white underbelly and black-tipped ears; its fur is not as coarse as that of the hispid hare, with which it was once thought to be related. It lives among bamboo and hilly grasslands vegetated with scrub, where it feeds on green plants, twigs and shoots. John Edward Gray first described it in 1832, and in 1927 Glover Morrill Allen moved it to the genus Caprolagus. Little is known about specific populations; only very small ones have been defined in Vietnam, where it is potentially threatened by hunting and habitat loss and has not been reported since the 1990s, while elsewhere it occurs in a number of protected areas and is considered least concern by the IUCN and the China Species Red List.