Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature. New York: Lantern Books, 2003

Susan E. Davis and Margo DeMello

Davis and DeMello’s smart, well-written, informative, and--at times--very personal book about rabbits joins a growing genre of books that focus on a single nonhuman animal in order to show how that animal’s nature has, for better or for worse, provided humans with material for building cultures and for making sense of the world. Some wildlife biologists who have spent a lifetime studying an animal and who come to write the classic book on the subject--Klauber (1956) and Neill (1971) are good examples--provide a comprehensive history of the animal in human culture before moving on to the biological details. Perhaps, however, the founding example of the genre in which Davis and DeMello are working is Smith and Daniel (1982), the product of an historian’s and a biologist’s team--teaching an interdisciplinary undergraduate course on the chicken in 1972 at the then-quite-new and famously innovative Santa Cruz campus of the University of California.

The increasing interest in animals and society in the 1980s inspired the interdisciplinary study of single animals (Gillespie & Mechling, 1987) as rich, symbolic material used by humans. In all these cases, the authors clearly have a passion for the animal they are studying; through their words and pictures, we come to understand the very complex ways in which animal natures and human natures and cultures interact.

Davis the journalist and DeMello the cultural anthropologist combine traditional research with intensive fieldwork--namely, living with house rabbits (more than 20 at a time for deMello, usually 2 at a time for Davis)--to provide a deep understanding of rabbits. The authors divide their chapters into three parts: the first, on the natural history of rabbits and how human history has intersected with that history; the second, on the rabbit in folklore and popular culture (cartoon rabbits); and the third, on rabbits as living objects used for human purposes--as meat, as a source of fur, as animal models for commercial and medical testing, and as pets. The authors find every bit of information they can about rabbits, sometimes talking with people who make a living breeding, selling, and killing rabbits, sometimes eavesdropping on their internet discussions. The writing is lively and engaging, so that the general reader as well as the scholar will find this book a treat.

Davis and DeMello’s passion for rabbits shines on nearly every page of this book, and they are not afraid to invoke personal experiences to make a point. Although this “personal” voice might distract some readers, I found it invaluable for a central point they are making in the book--namely, that rabbits (and, by extension, other animals) are individuals with their own personalities, something understood only by people who spend lots of time with individuals of the species.

Jane Goodall is a scientific and cultural hero of this view, and the authors here consciously carry Goodall’s sensitivities and goals into their own project. DeMello brings her ethnographer’s eyes and ears to observing the 20-some rabbits who live with her. Each is an individual, and (like any good cultural anthropologist) she reports sometimes on her own slow “getting it” as the natives study and teach her as much as she does them.

Likewise, Davis recounts her own experiences with the few rabbits who live with her. Their shared passion for rabbits brought them together. Apparently, they are the core of the House Rabbit Society (www.rabbit.org), which educates people about rabbits and lobbies for their welfare, including rabbit rescue. They also discuss frankly the differences between them as examples of the animal welfare position (Davis’s) and the animal rights position (DeMello’s).

The authors close the book with a brief survey of the most recent research on animal intelligence and the emotional lives of animals, showing how their own life experiences with rabbits confirm that animals live in a subjective life-world worthy of respect. These closing considerations are, to my mind, some of the most important in the book, yet here the discussion seems a bit too abridged. Although the authors understand, and have some sympathy for, the worries scientists have about anthropomorphizing animals, Davis and DeMello still come down on the side of recognizing the intelligence and emotions of individual animals as the basis for a rights argument. I am not sure the authors have avoided the problem of sentimentalizing animals, a frequent outcome of anthropomorphizing them, and I would like to have seen them work through this dilemma a bit more. Still, Davis and DeMello tell the rabbit’s story splendidly.

* Jay Mechling, University of California, Davis


References

Gillespie, A. K., & Mechling, J. (1987). American wildlife in symbol and story. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Klauber, L. M. (1956). Rattlesnakes: Their habits, life histories, and influence on mankind. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Neill, W. T. (1971). The last of the ruling reptiles: Alligators, crocodiles, and their kin. New York: Columbia University Press.

Smith, P., & Daniel, C. (1982). The chicken book. San Francisco: North Point Press.
 

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