00:00Have you ever seen a rabbit defeat a knight?
00:02Or march into battle armed with a spear?
00:05Because hundreds of years ago,
00:07artists all over Europe seemed obsessed with one very specific idea.
00:11Rabbits.
00:12Were.
00:14Evil.
00:15In the margins of medieval manuscripts,
00:17sacred texts,
00:18prayer books,
00:19even Bibles,
00:21monks filled the empty spaces with bizarre illustrations.
00:24And for some reason,
00:26rabbits kept showing up as armed psychopaths.
00:28They'd be hunting humans,
00:30executing prisoners,
00:32or leading armies of other rabbits into bloody wars.
00:35Some were even shown riding dogs like warhorses.
00:38This wasn't rare.
00:40Between the 13th and 16th centuries,
00:42these killer bunny scenes pop up again and again.
00:45From England's Luttrell Psalter,
00:47to the Smithfield Decretals,
00:48to church carvings in rural France.
00:51Why?
00:52Historians have a few theories.
00:54Some think it was satire,
00:55flipping the natural order to mock cowardly nobles or corrupt clergy.
01:00Others say it was moral symbolism.
01:02Rabbits were linked to lust and sin,
01:04so showing them as violent predators was a visual warning.
01:07And then there's the simple truth.
01:09Medieval monks had a dark sense of humor.
01:12But here's where things get even stranger.
01:14Because centuries later,
01:15in the American West,
01:17the dangerous rabbit myth evolved into something new.
01:20Something with antlers.
01:21In 1930 Wyoming,
01:23two brothers stitched deer antlers to a jackrabbit as a taxidermy prank.
01:27And the jackalope legend was born.
01:30This legend has persisted because of rabbits with shoat papillomavirus,
01:33which causes growths that can sometimes resemble antlers.
01:37But the idea of a not-so-cuddly rabbit?
01:39That was old news.
01:41From medieval killer bunnies to Bavarian wolpertingers,
01:44the jackalope is just the latest chapter in a centuries-old tradition,
01:48taking the harmless rabbit,
01:49and making it a little more dangerous.
01:52I'm sure the evil bunny art was just some kind of fad for a few hundred years.
01:55But it's fun to think that maybe,
01:57just maybe,
01:58there were vicious bunnies all over Europe back then wreaking havoc.
02:02Like and subscribe and comment with your favorite mythical animal you wish was real.
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