Jackalope
Aliases: Horned rabbit of the American West / Territory: États-Unis
Wyoming's antlered rabbit, invented as taxidermy by the Herrick brothers in 1932 — yet 'horned' rabbits genuinely exist.
The jackalope — jackrabbit plus antelope — is the improbable trophy hanging in bars and gift shops across the American West: a mounted rabbit wearing deer or pronghorn antlers. Its birth certificate carries names and a date. Around 1932 in Douglas, Wyoming, two teenage brothers who had learned taxidermy by mail order, Douglas and Ralph Herrick, came home from a hunt and happened to set a jackrabbit carcass down beside a pair of antlers; the visual pun did the rest. The first mount sold for about ten dollars to Roy Ball, who displayed it in the lobby of Douglas's La Bonte Hotel — from which it was stolen decades later.
The joke grew into a family industry — the Herricks turned out thousands of mounts — and then into a civic identity. Douglas styles itself the jackalope capital of the world: statues downtown, the silhouette on local signage, and above all the celebrated jackalope hunting licenses, issued with impeccable bureaucratic gravity and valid only on June 31st, between two and two in the morning. The folklore that accreted around the beast is pure campfire comedy: jackalopes are said to sing along with cowboys in convincing imitation of the human voice, to be best lured with whiskey, and the doe's milk is credited as a cure-all.
Yet the Herricks' invention has older and stranger roots than it appears. European cabinets of curiosities and natural histories had depicted a 'horned hare' — the so-called Lepus cornutus — since the Renaissance, and Bavarian taxidermists were assembling wolpertingers long before Wyoming. Those horned hares were not conjured from nothing: the Shope papilloma virus, scientifically described in 1933, one year after the first jackalope, causes wild rabbits to grow genuine keratinous, horn-like tumours on the head and muzzle, sometimes strikingly antler-shaped. Biological 'jackalopes' really do run the plains — victims of a virus, not hybrids of antelope.
The final irony is the virus's scientific legacy. As the first tumour-causing virus identified in a mammal, Shope's papillomavirus opened the research line connecting papillomaviruses to cancer — the lineage that ultimately led to HPV vaccines. The Wyoming hoax and serious virology intersect so thoroughly that writer Michael Branch devoted an entire 2022 book to the twin story. The jackalope is the textbook joke-cryptid: nobody believes in it, everybody loves it, and nature quietly supplied an authentic version.
+ Notable reports
// Douglas, Wyoming
Douglas and Ralph Herrick assembled the first taxidermy jackalope after a hunt, when a jackrabbit carcass landed beside a pair of antlers. The mount was sold to Roy Ball, who displayed it at the La Bonte Hotel in Douglas.
// Rockefeller Institute, United States
Richard Shope described the papillomavirus that gives wild rabbits real horn-like growths — the biological explanation behind the horned hares of European natural history, and the hoax's accidental scientific cousin.
// Douglas, Wyoming
The town institutionalised its creature: statues, festivities, and parody hunting licenses valid only on the nonexistent June 31st. The jackalope became an openly fictional civic emblem — a rare officially municipal cryptid.
+ Leading rational explanations
- A documented, openly claimed commercial invention: the Herrick brothers' taxidermy, Douglas, Wyoming, c. 1932
- An older European horned-hare tradition (Lepus cornutus, wolpertinger) recycled by the American West
- Shope papilloma virus: real rabbits with keratinous horn-like growths fed the imagery
- Campfire humour and tourist hazing sustaining the lore (singing, whiskey lures, parody licenses)
Status note
Class 5: an invention documented as such — the makers, the date and the first buyer of the taxidermy mount are all identified, and the town openly embraces the fiction.
+ Frequently asked questions
- Did the jackalope ever exist?
- No: it is a taxidermy composite created around 1932 by the Herrick brothers in Douglas, Wyoming, and embraced ever since as an openly fictional emblem. Real rabbits infected with the Shope papilloma virus, however, do grow horn-like keratinous tumours.
- Where does the horned-rabbit image come from?
- It long predates Wyoming: European naturalists depicted a 'Lepus cornutus' from the Renaissance onward, and Bavaria produced its taxidermied wolpertingers. Those images most likely trace back to rabbits genuinely afflicted with virus-induced horned tumours.
- Can you really get a jackalope hunting license?
- Yes — the town of Douglas issues them by the thousand, valid only on June 31st, a date that does not exist, between two and two in the morning. It is a parody souvenir, fully advertised as such.