Snow Rabbit, a national second-class protected mammal
English name: Mountain Hare
The Snow Rabbit is a larger rabbit with a distinguishing feature of a short, stubby tail that is white in any season. The snow rabbit's body hair is tan in summer and white on its abdomen, and in winter, its entire body hair turns pure white. It is between 45 cm and 63 cm long and weighs up to 2.7 kg.
Snow rabbits are very hardy, and are mainly found in northern Heilongjiang, northeastern Inner Mongolia and northern Xinjiang; It is found in a wide range from northern Europe to eastern Siberia.
The winter snow rabbit is a veritable "great white rabbit", but it does not have red eyes. Their coat color turns white, not a genetic variation, but the result of active adaptation to the environment. In summer, snow rabbits have tan body hair, which allows them to be well hidden from the mottled environment of shrubs and grasses; In winter, the snow rabbit coat color turns to pure white, which can be well hidden in the snow, effectively reducing the probability of them being discovered by predators. The reason why our daily white rabbits have white body hair is genetic abnormalities, which cause their bodies to be unable to synthesize melanin, and the iris of the eyeballs also shows red due to the lack of melanin, that is, the color of blood.
(Figure from the network)