FACTORALY - E35 RABBITS

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Trivia is, by its nature, a rabbit hole. This time, we've decided to take a look at the animals that make the holes. Rabbits. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, Simon. Hello, Bruce. How are you today? I'm very well, thank you. On this fine episode of Factorily, how are you? I'm also fine on this fine episode of fine Fact Orally fineness. Fact Orally then. So what is Fact Orally for those who have accidentally bumped into us here today and don't know what is going on? Let me tell you, Simon, what it is. Actually, I could tell the listener as well. So what it is, is we are two voiceover artists who like facts. Indeed. Hence fact orally. Orally. I know we don't spell orally

correctly. I know. Anyway, so we use our voices to convince people to buy things, do things, do things a certain way. To relax, to learn, all sorts of stuff. Yes. Go on, Simon, do your relaxing voice. My relaxing voice sounds a little like, and it involves being centred and grounded. There you go. Anyway, Factually is about facts. Indeed. And not the kind of facts that are useful, really. How to change

a lightbulb. Yeah, not that kind of thing at all. How to cook pasta. Nope. Nothing useful. We won't teach you any of those things. Nope. But we will inform you about stuff. Absolutely. We will rabbit on for ages and ages about useless, unimportant, but interesting facts. Well, interesting use of the word rabbit there. Oh, did you see what I did? I did see what you did, because today we have both researched, thank goodness, the same thing, which is rabbits. Rabbits indeed. Who would have thought that a little bit of

research about our bunny friends would divulge so many interesting, interesting facts? I know, and we can make rabbits interesting for 30 minutes. We can, and we will, hopefully. Yes, let's do that. Go on then. Shall we start with rabbits? Do know where where the word rabbits comes from yes and no oh okay it's one of those words that appears in lots of different places at around the same time with no definitive single point of origin okay um there is an old mixture of english and latin rabettus which refers to a young uh a young offspring of the hare family. Okay. We're not talking about hares, though, this time. We're not splitting hares.

No, we're not splitting hares at all. Absolutely. There is a Dutch word, robet, meaning rabbit. There's all sorts of different languages, different dialects, that have a word that looks and sounds roughly like rabbit and refers to, roughly speaking, rabbits. And then you suddenly get the French lapin, which is just... Or the Phoenician, indeed.

What's the Phoenician? The Phoenician, it was a thing called ispan or hispania. Okay. So an hispan was actually a rock hydrax, which looks a bit like a rabbit. Yes. But it isn't actually a rabbit. So the Phoenicians thought that this land where they found these rock hydraxes was full of rabbits. So they called it Hispania.

So Spain is land of rabbits. That's fantastic. I never knew that. There you go. We're no more than five minutes in and I've already learned something that I didn't know. There you go. We're no more than five minutes in and I've already learned something that I didn't know. There you go. Wonderful. The Latin for the rabbit and hare related family of animals is Leporidae. Okay.

L-E-P-O-R-I-D-A-E. And it's from that that we sort of get the French lapin. Yes. Lepidoptery is something else entirely, isn't it? Something entirely different. The study of ladybirds? Butterflies, isn't it study of butterflies isn't it butterflies oh so close so close so rabbits are they are they lucky well i assume you're referring here to the to the rabbit's foot yes i always thought that's really unlucky for the rabbit.

Well, I would have thought so. Some people say it has to be like what I would call the offside rear. The back left. Great. So it has to be that one. But in 1584, they were carried to ward off arthritis. Oh, really? Yes, apparently. But in 1827 that had changed

so that it was anti-witchcraft in 1827. So obviously witches were more important than arthritis. And then it just became like a good luck charm. Okay. And if you start the first of the month, if the first thing you say when you wake up on the first of the month is rabbit, rabbit, then you're going to have luck all that month. Really? Yeah. I had no idea. I tend to say a pinch and a punch for the

first day of the month. That's what I would say as well. Yes. And no returns. No backers. Do you know how many baby rabbits a rabbit can have? No, I don't. Tell me. So every litter can contain up to 14 rabbits, up to 14 kittens. Really? And they can have one a month. Oh my giddy aunt. So rabbits spread quite fast. There is something like, there's a rabbit for every person in the UK.

It's about 60 million rabbits in the UK. Whoa. Not as bad as Australia, though. They have quite a few, don't they? They had a real problem. They did. There was a chap who decided that he wanted to hunt, hunt, fish and shoot, going out to the colonies and wanted to shoot something.

So he shipped out some rabbits to Australia, to the colonies. And he shipped out not that many actually um he shipped out 45 and then released them okay and now they're quite a big problem now they're a huge problem you get things like the rabbit proof fence and things like yes which i always just think sounds like a bulletproof vest yes as if someone's firing rabbits at you a rabbit gun yes exactly yes yes a small bazooka containing rabbits but there's there's kind of rewards for if you can come up with in australia if you can come up with a way of dealing with the rabbit problem okay uh which people have you know tried tried to get by by generally by coming up with diseases because i mean you can't mean, they're still used for shooting.

You can still shoot rabbits in Australia quite happily. But the diseases that they get, you can kind of do a lot more with the disease in terms of getting rid of a whole bunch of rabbits than you can with a shotgun. So rabbits really do breed like rabbits? They really do. They're quite rampant. So you said up to 14 in a litter, up to a litter a month. Yes. So two rabbits. That's a lot of rabbits per year.

Yes, it's about 160 rabbits, yeah. It's a lot of rabbits. Crikey. No wonder there's a problem. Yes. Now you talked about an English person introducing rabbits to Australia. Yes. They were introduced into this country in the first place. They're not native to this country. Okay.

They were introduced into this country in the first place by the Normans. There's so much to blame the French for. Yeah. They brought rabbits over here shortly after the conquest for exactly the same reason, to hunt. And for food. For food, exactly that. And they purpose-built warrens so rabbits naturally burrow under the ground they have loads of tunnels interconnecting

each other with individual rooms sort of larger hollows that they use for either either sleeping or nesting if they're expecting which by the sounds of it is quite a lot of the time yes um busy maternity unit indeed um but yes they had uh this country still has the remains of some medieval rabbit warrens okay um there are quite a few places dotted around the country that have the word warren in the name i know somebody called warren and people call him bunny i was was going to reference, actually, the TV show Porridge. I think there was a character in that called Warren and everyone used to call him Bunny. Yes. Brilliant.

But yeah, there are quite a few of these places. There's a place in Norfolk called Thetford Warren. There's a place in Bedfordshire called Roney Warren. There's a place in Dartmoor called Ditsworthy Warren. Okay. And these were all places where the Normans and later, you know, right up up right through all the way to the sort of 16 1700s really um people made these man-made warrens uh they would dig out these large cavernous areas

called pillow mounds so if you're ever sort of walking through the woods and you see these unusual uh lengthwise pillow shaped mounds they're actually part of a man-made rabbit warren yeah and um they they just you know they bred as we've established quite well they lived in these warrens and they were just sort of they were just there for the taking really yes um the area would often be surrounded by either a fence or a moat sometimes to sort of curtail the spread of them. Yes, they need water. So if you keep them away from water,

that's quite a good way of controlling the population. The people who looked after these places were called Warriners. And you had to get a special license from the king in order to hunt and shoot, kill, eat rabbits. But yes, there are quite a few places dotted around the country that still carry that name, and you can actually sort of see the mounds and the undulations in the ground where these rabbits lived.

So it sounds like you went down quite a, what should we call it? Went down a bit of a rabbit hole. But the original use of that was in Lewis Carroll, wasn't it? The white rabbit was going down a rabbit hole. Oh, yes, of course. Oh, I'd never put two and two together. I'd never really thought that was the origin of it. But yes, Alice absolutely goes down a rabbit hole.

She does. As do we quite frequently on our research. We do. We do like a tangent or two. But virtually. Not by eating bits of mushroom. No, certainly not. Beatrix Potter, of course, was very fond of rabbits.

Actually, she wasn't that fond of rabbits. Right. Because when she wrote, she had a stuffed rabbit on her desk. Which inspired her to create Peter Rabbit. Peter Rabbit, exactly. Now, why I'm staggered, as you're saying this, I'm staggered that I didn't go down the peter rabbit route because uh when i was a lad i went to beatrix potter primary school oh right did you in earlsfield near wandsworth and um our logo was peter rabbit emblazoned on our uniforms wow never even occurred to me to mention him so thank you

you're welcome and you've just reminded me oh that that many years ago when I was a member of the British Motorcycle Federation, we used to go and do hospital visits at Christmas with toys for children. And so all these bikers would show up on their noisy bikes and we'd be dressed in leathers. Some of the BMF people looked a bit kind of dodgy. But we'd all be carrying presents to the children. Right. And I remember going to, I think it's called the Hammersmith Hospital. And so there's all these bikers shop and the security guards thought that we were kind of coming to raid the pharmacy or something.

And we kind of went up to him and went, excuse me, can you tell me where the Peter Rabbit ward is, please? The least menacing sentence ever uttered by a biker. I know. Rabbits communicate by body language, you know. Do they indeed? Yes. Such as?

The way they stand and the way they the way they move okay uh is a communication thing because they don't make very much noise they don't do they know rabbits are one of those things that it's really hard to do an impression of yes yes i think they have a squeak a really sort of high-pitched squeak when they're running away in terror yeah they can run quite fast though can they have they can go about 18 miles an hour 18 30k yeah well it's good going they can they can really quite fast, though. Can they? How fast? They can go about 18 miles an hour. 18? About 30k, yeah. Wow, that's good going. They can really whip along.

They've got some powerful back legs, haven't they? And they have very good vision and hearing. Right. Because their eyes are on the sides of their faces. They've got like 360-degree vision. So if there's anything coming at them, like a predator. Or they can hear it because they can actually independently swivel their ears. Ah, right.

So they can use their ears like a sort of like a sonic detector. And they can pinpoint sounds. I see. Very accurately. Ah. Although rabbits do have 360 degree vision, because their eyes are on the side of their heads, they have a tiny little blind spot in front of their nose. Oh, do they?

So they can't actually see directly in front of them. So they have to turn their heads in order to see what's in front of them. Oh, is that why they do that all the time? Yeah, yeah. But the other thing they do with their bodies is they show when they're happy. Okay. You know you see these cartoons with rabbits jumping up and down in the air where they're twisting their bodies when they're happy.

Oh, yes, a little skip of the light. It's called a binky. Binky. Binky, yeah. It's that jumping and twisting movement that they do great and it has a name binky that's wonderful another thing they do um to show their excitement and enthusiasm um picture bambi yes and there's a little rabbit called thumper thumper whenever he's excited he thumps the ground with his back leg. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Indeed. And this is something they actually do. I thought this was a myth. I thought it was just that cartoon character had a slightly twitchy leg. But rabbits do this. In the wild, they do it as a means of communication to warn each other from danger. Yes.

Oftentimes you have a rabbit sort of sitting above ground, keeping an eye out on things and he'll, or she'll, it'll, it'll thumb its back leg on the ground to warn the other rabbits that are in the warren underneath that there's danger so don't come out for a bit. We seem to have wandered down the fictional rabbit hole. Only briefly. But there are loads and loads and loads of fictional rabbits. There are, yes. You know, everything from like Br'er Rabbit, this sort of anti-authoritarian, clever, folkloric symbol,

to my favourite, Jessica Rabbit, voiced by Kathleen Turner. I'm pretty sure she's not a rabbit. Jessica got voted in 2009 the sexiest cartoon character of all time. Really? But the other one was also a rabbit, which is the Cadbury's Caramel Bunny, which is voiced by Miriam Margulies. Take it easy with Cadbury's Caramel. But yeah, there's been loads and loads

and loads of rabbits. One of the most famous is the Energizer Bunny who keeps going. Oh yes, of course. Yes, because he has loads of energy to tear around and bounce and run. Still going. That was his strapline was still going. And that was

introduced in 1988 right uh by energizer and then duracell sort of like appropriated the the bunny oh do you know what as you said energizer it didn't quite sit right with me i'd always remembered the duracell bunny not the energizer yes there were some great energizer bunny commercials where the energizer bunny would appear in various different things, like Star Wars and Dracula films. So they would put the Energizer Bunny into all sorts of strange places. I'll put a link to some of the commercials in the blog on Factorily.com, which is a rabbit hole.

Factorily.com, the place where you can further your knowledge even more. It should come with a warning. Yes. For every minute Bruce and I spend here chatting about what we've researched, you'll probably find another 20 minutes worth of stuff to read on our website. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the energizer bunny was used in a Raiders of the Lost Ark parody. Oh, I remember the little rabbit in the Indiana Jones hat.

Yeah. Oh. This is very cool. Bringing back memories now. And, of course, then there's the iconic, the classic, the biggest ever fictional rabbit. Ah, yes. The general from Watership Down. Ah, no.

I'm talking about Bugs. Of course you are. Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny. 1940, first appearance. What a guy. And voiced by, I mean, we're into voices.

So, you know, we know about Mel Blanc, who did it until 1979. Who brought out the immortal. Yeah. What's up, Jack? Well, the bit of that is controversial. Oh, is it? Because Bugs ate carrots. Yes.

But the Broccoli Institute of America lobbied for bugs to be eating broccoli instead of carrots. As did the Utah Celery Lobby, who lobbied for bugs to be eating celery instead of carrots. That's incredible. So they're all trying to get bugs to eat their own particular veg. Oh, wonderful.

He didn't have a terribly varied diet, did he? Now, as I understand, I mean, this may not be true, but as I understood it, I thought that Mel Blanc couldn't eat carrots. So he actually used to eat celery to make that noise. Oh, really?

It never occurred to me he was eating anything. I thought he was just smacking his lips together in front of the microphone. But he's actually, yeah, there is a certain crunch to it, isn't there? Yeah, yeah. I'll have to listen back to that and see whether that sounds like celery being crunched. Absolutely. I had a quick look around Bugs Bunny. Well, it was sort of an indirect, accidental look around Bugs Bunny. I was looking at rabbits' diets. Oh, yes. And we all know that rabbits eat carrots, right? That's the thing that they eat.

Yes. Every child. I had a couple of pet rabbits when I was a kid. We fed them carrots because that's what rabbits eat. Yes. Rabbits eat carrots. We all know that. Yes.

It's the truth. Yes. It's not the truth no um in the wild rabbits eat grass and wild flowers and things like that they might occasionally nibble a carrot top as did peter rabbit in the the book that you mentioned by petricks potter yeah um but they don't really eat carrots that is entirely bugs bunny's fault yes um bugs bunny was pictured eating eating carrots and therefore all the children of that generation and later started started feeding carrots to their rabbits and the reason bugs bunny eats carrots is because of clark gable

is it yes i didn't know this before i did this, but there is a film from 1934 called It Happened One Night. Yes. Starring Clark Gable. And there's a scene in which Clark Gable and his lady friend, who the actress's name I can't remember, sorry about that, they're standing by the side of the road trying to hitch a lift somewhere. And Clark Gable is standing there casually eating a carrot. And there are quite a few mannerisms there are quite a few tones of his voice that sound distinctly bugs bunny-esque you know he's munching away on this

carrot and he actually says yeah well you see you know it's it's remarkable and apparently that was quite a large influence for mel blank basing the voice of Bugs Bunny. So the reason that children all over the world feed their rabbits carrots is because of Clark Gable in 1934. Carrots aren't the best thing to feed rabbits because rabbits' teeth don't ever stop growing. Oh. So they need to be worn down. Right.

So, you know, you have that sort of like that buck they call it buck tooth don't they after a buck rabbit yes so that sort of large teeth at the front yes um it's because rabbits teeth don't stop growing so they have to eat stuff that grinds their teeth down oh i see right so so eating something thin like grass or hay or whatever well exactly hay hay is a great thing for rabbits to eat yeah it does it does grind things down wonderful but apart from rabbits eating other things rabbits are also delicious oh yes rabbits are eaten themselves especially in uh in malta okay one of the national dishes of malta is is a thing called uh stufat talfenec very good well which is

it's a it's a rabbit stew in a red wine and tomato sauce. Oh, yum yum. Yeah. It's very nice. I've had it. I've never had rabbit. Have you never eaten rabbit? I've had Welsh rabbit. I've eaten rabbit quite a lot. It's very nice. It's quite strong. Okay. It's gamey, isn't it?

It's gamey, but if you have it in the right sauce it's very good. I mean, this is sort of the basis as to why the Normans brought rabbits here in order to eat? It's gamey, but if you have it in the right sauce, it's very good. I mean, this is sort of the basis as to why the Normans brought rabbits here in order to eat. It's why we took rabbits to Australia in order to eat. And hunt. And hunt. The meat is very rich in omega-3 and

high in protein, low in calories. According to one website I found, compared to beef, pork, lamb, turkey, veal and chicken, rabbit has the highest percentage of protein, the lowest percentage of fat and has the fewest calories per pound of meat. Wow. And because they breed so readily, there are an awful lot of them around. So you can get quite a lot of good quality meat for not an awful lot of work.

Yes. There are other rabbits that we haven't mentioned, which are wrapped in gold foil. Oh, the lint chocolate rabbit. Oh, yeah. Have you ever had a kilo one? The big kilo? No, I've never dared. Just the little ones. So good. The little golden bell.

Oh, yes. Well, the bell on the big one, on the one kilo one, is huge. I would imagine it would be, yes. Proportionately. They're actually wrapped by hand and the bells are put on by hand. It's very, you know, it's quite a hands-on thing. Oh, how lovely. And they make about 150 million

lynch rabbits a year. How many, sorry? 150 million. Goodness me. Been going since 1952 in Switzerland. They started making them in the UK in 19, oh sorry, importing them into the UK in 1996. Right. So we've had gold bunnies from Lindt for quite a few years now.

Wow. So we have quite a lot of bunnies in everyday life then, don't we really? In our backyard, in our sweet shop, in our TVs, in our movies. Yes. All over the place. Yeah, they're all over the shop. I mean, they get everywhere, don't they? They do.

They do get everywhere. I found out that there are 25 to 30 distinct species of rabbit in the world, which is quite a few. Some of them, there's a species called cottontail. I didn't realise that was actually a thing. I thought that was just the name of a character in Peter Rabbit. Yeah. And I had a look at the different sort of extremes of rabbit.

The smallest species of rabbit is called the Netherland dwarf, which can weigh as little as one and a half pounds. Right. The largest species is the Flemish giant. I've heard about these. Are these the ones you hold, like you have to have two hands to hold them? Two hands to hold it, yeah, absolutely. These things can get to over 14 pounds per rabbit, which is pretty large.

And it was one of these Flemish giants that, here we go into the Guinness Book of World Records, as ever, one of my favourite publications. Yes. The largest rabbit ever measured was a Flemish giant rabbit. His name was Darius, and he was owned by a family in Worcestershire here in England. Okay. And he measured four feet three inches from nose to tail. Wow.

That's a long rabbit. That's three quarters of you and me. Yes. Yeah, a long rabbit. That's like, that's three quarters of you and me. Yes. Yeah. That's huge. Angora. Angora. Oh, I love Angora. Is that, that word has suddenly just sprung to mind and I know nothing about it. Is that rabbit fur? That's rabbit. Yes.

Yeah. Yes. Angora rabbits. I've got nothing else to say about the fact it just came to my head. Do you want to look it up um yeah yes so uh so angora hair is produced from the angora rabbit yes and it's very soft and it's very fluffy and the rabbit produces quite a lot of it and um it can be used to uh to make all sorts of things jumpers shawls all sorts very soft i think i have an or i had an angora sweater i think but they're quite sort of fluffy and kind of the sort of like the silhouette of an angora sweater is very blurred yes okay yes yes uh it's it's easily confused with um car doesn't this get tricky angora comes from an angora

rabbit yes mohair comes from an angora goat do you know i thought they were goats for a time but now but now you explain that to me i now understand so mohair from a goat yes an angora goat an angora goat the reason we have an angora rabbit and an angora goat is that they are said to have originated, there's no hard proof for this, but they are said to have originated in Ankara. Oh, okay. Historically known as Angora.

So the rabbit and the goat are allegedly from there and therefore the hair, the wool that you get from each of those is known as Angora. That's brilliant. it just ankara yes that's where the butter comes from isn't it insert drum noise here there's a wonderful song by the uhney musical duo Chaz and Dave. Yes. I think it's just called Rabbit, isn't it? I think it is, yeah.

In which they used the word rabbit to mean talk, to chat away. Yes. I had no idea why that was the case. I just assumed you look at a rabbit, it chews constantly. It's always eating, it's always chewing. It could look like it's talking. Okay. And that's it. That's always chewing it could look like it's talking okay and that's it that's what i had assumed turns out um it's cockney rhyming slang rabbit and pork oh okay

which rhymes with talk right so that's why we wrap it there you go that great i'll put a link in the show notes to a video of them singing this wonderfully melodic song. Yes. It's a beauty, isn't it? If you've never heard it, you haven't missed it. You haven't missed much. I think that's all I've got on rabbits. Yes, I think we've rabbited along for long enough. Yes, it's time to jump.

Time to hop and skip. Let's go and thump off. Yes. We've borrowed into the topic. Oh, we have. We have gone down that rabbit hole. So there you go. If you've enjoyed listening to us chatting about rabbits,

please come again next time. We do this sort of thing quite regularly. What should they do, Simon? They should. Well, I mean, they can if they so choose to do and we would freely encourage them to like us, to subscribe to us, to share us with your friends

and to give us five beautiful, lovely gold star reviews. Yes. Thank you very much. So, thank you for listening. Please come again next time for another episode of Factorily. Cheerio. Au revoir.