A few years ago there were stories about giant rabbits circulating around the internet and these were considered to be spoofs which were circulated via email just for the sake of it. Emails of this type are not uncommon.
How many people have received emails entitled: 'Lead in lipstick', '1600 pound man eating grizzly bear', or 'Poisonous camel spiders secretly inject venom'?
All these stories were untrue email hoaxes.
However, the tales of giant rabbits which have often been put into the same category are in fact true.
A German man has reared a giant rabbit which stands at one metre tall. The rabbit, named Herman, has ears which measure twenty one centimetres long. This is about the length of an average rabbit. At 7.7kgs, Herman is a giant, even for his own breed which normally weighs around 6kgs once fully grown.
Herman the Rabbit Weighs in at 7.7kgs.
Herman is housed in a specially built wooden hutch and eats more that 2kgs of food per day. His owner, Hans Wagner, from Berlin, says that Herman's favorite treat is lettuce, but he also gets through a bale of hay every week. Vitamin pills also help to keep him healthy.
This German rabbit could be a world record holder but the Guinness World Records have stopped accepting entries for this category because of concern over people feed their rabbits too much in order to achieve a world record.
There are several contenders for the title including the current champion which is a French rabbit weighing just over 12 kgs and Bodmin, the Flemish Giant rabbit who was reared in Scotland and weighs in at 9kgs.
Bodmin's owner, Michael Alford says that the rabbit can eat a whole cabbage, or cauliflower at one sitting and is still growing.
A common domestic rabbit can reach around 8 kgs at the most, but this is not usual. Most would weigh in at around 3 or 4 kgs once they are fully grown. However, Bodmin has a long way to go before he catches up with the current record holder.
If you receive emailed stories about record holding rabbits, grizzly bears, spiders, lipstick or anything else and you aren't sure if they are true, you can often find them exposed on www.snopes.com.
.
