Harlequin rabbit
The Japanese rabbit is a medium sized breed rabbits weighing 3.75 to 4.25 kg.
Appearance of the Japanese rabbit
The color of the Japanese rabbit consists of yellow and black color fields. The aim is to distribution of the colors in the purest possible color fields that should not be interspersed with other colored hair today. The whole body should be covered with not too large color fields, a prognosis based on the two body halves each offset stripe pattern is desired. For the head drawing a cross drawing is sought, ie one side of the head is black, the other to be yellow, with each opposes colored ears. The name of the Japanese seems to be a figment of his French breeders, with an origin from Japan, he has nothing to do.
In the UK and in the U.S., the Japanese is known as Harlequin, the breed was as Sandford writes, renamed during the Second World War, " in a burst of patriotic feeling ." In the UK, next to the black and yellow, a blue - yellow, brown - yellow and yellow colors fehfarbig - stroke are recognized.
The coloring of the Japanese rabbit is caused by a mutation of the gene for the training of Black (Yellow Series, icon German B, international E) to bj or ej. It is unclear whether all Japanese breeds as is desired, the agouti factor G / A by the factor for monochrome g / a was displaced. The Japanese hereditary formula of the rabbit is therefore: AbjCDG ( g) ( German symbolism ) or A ( a) BCDej ( English symbolism ).
History of the Japanese rabbit
How Hochstrasser assumes already exist very long rabbit showing a Japanese drawing, but these were not further considered and not developed as planned to a race. Dorn writes to the creation and naming of the Japanese rabbit:
" Its origin is completely unknown and it is pointless to ask any assumptions about its origin and develop designs. Thing is only that we know nothing about getting this breed., It is equally unclear what joker thought up the name of the breed and what reason he had this. "
1887 rabbits were shown under the names of Japanese in Paris for the first time. The drawing of the former animals displayed also on white shares that were bred out in the course of time. From France, the Japanese rabbits moved to Switzerland, where in 1896 a first assessment scale for this breed was published and England to Germany.
In Germany, special August Lange had merit in Freiberg to this breed. Among the German breeders has long been discussed which color distribution should have the Japanese, while part of the breeder wanted to have a possible bunt acting Rabbit with round spots " floral design ", another part attached great importance to a regular, quasi checkerboard-like distribution of the color fields consisting of bands of color which are arranged offset accurately as possible on the back line. After a long time a compromise was after both drawing pictures were equivalent, 1960 agreed the former associations ZDK (now ZDRK ) and VKSK sure to place the breeding goal to periodic distribution of the color fields, while both drawing variations are possible in the BDK still.
Today Japanese rabbits are regularly seen at exhibitions.
Similar breeds
The smaller Rhön rabbit owes its coloration also the Japanese factor, however, in combination with the chinchilla factor that leads a black-and- white coloration, in contrast to the Japanese rabbits here a non-uniform, speckled distribution of the color fields are required. The Rhenish Pinto and the " small check rabbit " (Czech pinto / piebald tri-color ), the three colored Dalmatian Rex and the three-color piebald -Rex combine the Japanese factor with the system for Punktscheckung. The Jamorakaninchen is a small long-haired breed, the Japanese - Rexes a short-haired breed, which also show the Japanese drawing. In many other breeds, the Japanese drawing is acceptable: Dutch rabbit colors dwarves, dwarf Aries / Aries dwarves, lions and teddy rabbit, Kleinrex ( japanese colored and royal mantle piebald ) and many others.