The History Of Lop Ears?

[Linz_1987]

Does anybody know exactly the history of how lopeared rabbits appeared? And why dont you get lop eared rabbits in thewild? I am realy interested to know how they came about! They couldntof suddenly appeared like that surely?

 

[Linz_1987]

Oh i just read somewhere...

Lop breeds of the pastincludedrabbits whose ears flopped forward over their faces and rabbits whoseears both flopped over to the same side.These breedsare extinct now and the Lop we see today is the Lop ofchoice.

I suppose they have been messedabout with by scientists to get their ears like that? And they must ofcame from the extinct 'lop' rabbit somewhere along the line?

Does anybody know any more about how they were created?

 

[naturestee]

Most breeds are created when someone notices arandom mutation in one of their rabbits and starts breeding selectivelyto make more. To my knowledge, there are no strains of petrabbits that have been altered through direct genetic manipulation,although I have heard that someone inserted jellyfish genes into labrabbits to make them glow. There are also geneticallymanipulated fish (glowfish ie glowing danios), and allergen free dogs.

 

[Linz_1987]

Omg the jellyfish and the rabbit is totallyinhumane!! How could anybody do such thing! Thank you for your help!Although i am not totally sure of how they appeared. Im not one forunderstanding big words lol But i understand where you arecoming from....

 

[naturestee]

Well, do you know anything about DNA?Sometimes it doesn't get copied correctly and wierd things turnup. Say, lop ears or blue eyes or something. Thiscan be passed on to the babies if the breeder looks for the right DNAin the other parent, too. What breeders do is choose tworabbits with particular traits and breed them together to get babiesthat look a certain way.

But the appearance of new traits can be totally random. Itjust... happens sometimes. There's all sorts of neatscientific theories about it, and about how traits of the parents arepassed down to their babies.

 

[MyBabyBunnies]

As stated above, it was probably breeding for certain traits that led to Lop bunnies.

If they breed so much for one specific trait there are bound to be other things resulted from that such as lop ears.

I believe that lop ears are actually caused by the crown and weakmuscles that cause the ears to lop instead of standing up. It justhappened over a long period of time to get the lop eared rabbits thatwe have today.

 

[Linz_1987]

Agh i see i understand it all now! lol thankgod! lol i must have brain the size of a pea! It all makes sence now!

 

[pamnock]

Manydifferent genes control the manyfeatures of the ears. Selectivebreeding can be used to magnify desired traits. All domesticrabbits are the same species, however, their individual breed traitsvary widely. Rabbits chosen for breeding would have had awide space between the ears and the ones with the longest ears wouldhave been bred together to produce a rabbit with long ears that lop andthat had poor connective tissue development at the base of their ears(allowing them to flop to the side). This trait canalso be noted in other breeds besides lops -- for instance, I commonlysee young erect eared Silver Martens with "airplane" ears.

According to Bob Whitman's book, Domestic Rabbit Breeds &Their Histories, precisely when and where the lop eared rabbitoriginated is unknown. It is speculated that the first lopsmay have been bred in China by the 16th century.



Pam