Thats one BIIIIIG bunny.

[Brunhidden]

A story which appears in todays sunday paper and may have made news near you too is that a 67 year old german rabbit breeder who has been spending the last 47 years breeding his bunnies has just been confronted by the north korean government because they think his 'giant grey' breed of rabbit may be the solution to thier fammine problem.

how? well just LOOK at the thing.



on average they weigh 22 pounds or 7 kilograms, provide about 15 pounds of meat which is enough to feed 8 people. the 12 rabbits he sold to korea should produce at least 60 offspring within the year if all goes well, and he sold them for €80 per rabbit instead of the usual €200 to €250 due to being happy to help starving people off in some foreign dictatorship....and the fact that its in papers across the world didnt hurt either, now china wants some bunnies too.

for those of you who dont know, for some freakish reason im deathly afraid of rabbits. chances are it has to do with during my childhood there was a rabbit 'dealer' who would sell people cute pet bunnies and was so nice that when your bunny got too big and was hard for you to take care of he would let you swap it for another young one. i loved my bunnies, i named them and played with them and let them roam outside three times a week...but one day i learned that he did this because he grew them to make sausage out of and liked having other people feed his livestock. this was a bad time for my father to ask if he could have a sample, that did not help at all. whats more likely is that i was traumatised when i met "butch the guard rabbit" that the guy had guarding the rabbit cages- seriously, this bunny was almost as big as the one above except it was an albino with evil looking eyes and a wicked bite.

an eight year old running in fear from a fifteen pound angry bunny in a studded collar who shrieks in demonic rage is more humiliating then you think, especially when the damned thing catches you. thus i am now strangely happy that the old german dude proclaims that his bunnies are delicous and he eats roast rabbit almost every day...but the fact that theres now an entire breed of rabbits THAT size going to be raised en masse and probably escaped into the wild....heebie jeebies for a week.

who here thinks that in 10 years time koreas biggest problem will be crop destruction due to rabbits the size of doberman pincers?

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

[Zedd]

Big feedings

[RJ]

...That CAN'T be real, right?

I just looked it up through Snopes... maybe so...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070202/D8N1N9400.html

[Boog]

I feel rather bad for the huge freakbunny. I mean, that size can't be healthy. I'm not talking about obesity here, I mean just generic "they're-not-supposed-to-get-that-big"-ness. However, those things escaping into the wild would be funny.

[thegayhare]

Why am I getting flash backs to night of the lepus

you know I might like to have one I wonder if they cn be house broken

[Alan Garou]

Great. First the bunnies conquered Austrailia. They ravaged crops and utterly destroyed the ecosystem. But that's not enough for you and your fuzzy brethrin, is it, Gayhare? Now you're invading Korea, and you're making plans for the Americas! I urge all non-bunnies to rise up, and prepare for the bunny invasion!

[Kenji]

I'm actually kind of amazed.
Not that a rabbit got that big.
But because someone affected an animal to be bigger, instead of smaller.
If it really is true. Which would be interesting...

[thegayhare]

I wonder if it's effected by the same flaws that large breed dogs are.  do to there rapid breeding up for size.

Short life spans due to under developed heart,  lungs and  the like.  I know dogs like great danes just dn't have a heart that big enough for there body so the heart does alot of extra work causing it to wear out faster

[Aisha deCabre]

No animal a rabbit's size should be bred to be that big...    People and their selective breeding...

...That CAN'T be real, right?

I just looked it up through Snopes... maybe so...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070202/D8N1N9400.html

As with a few of the news stories on there, I think that the news might be right, but the picture could be fabricated.  You can tell if you look at it closely enough.  The head shouldn't be that size in proportion to the body, and if you look around the head area the background behind it is blurred...the rest of the picture isn't.

Also, the guy's visible hand is bigger than his face.  The little things can easily debunkify a picture.  Same with the huge camel spiders.   

[Sid]

Uhm, before too many instantly hops onto the "Photoshop" bandwagon:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4690000/newsid_4694200/4694270.stm
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,458863,00.html
Both supply additional photos, so are the two news sources incorrect, too?

[Valynth]

Does anyone else realise that the North Korean government is too corrupt to let the masses have food?

I mean, they could easily feed their population with what they could produce, but the North Korean Government and their agriculture methods are too utterly corrupt and incompetent  to get food to the people.  To make matters worse, they refuse to acknowledge that.

In other words, he just wasted 12 good rabbits on a lost cause.

[EvilIguana966]

Does anyone else realise that the North Korean government is too corrupt to let the masses have food?

I mean, they could easily feed their population with what they could produce, but the North Korean Government and their agriculture methods are too utterly corrupt and incompetent  to get food to the people.  To make matters worse, they refuse to acknowledge that.

In other words, he just wasted 12 good rabbits on a lost cause.

That's why the NK angle of the story is interesting to me.  People starve in North Korea because the regime is an extremely strict Stalinist/Moaist system.  No superbunny would have any effect at all on the plight of those people.  However, I would not put it past their regime to do something as silly as send out people looking for this type of thing.  Who among them truly believes a bigger species of rabbit would have any effect I do not know, but this type of thing isn't unprecedented in the totalitarian regime playbook. 

As with a few of the news stories on there, I think that the news might be right, but the picture could be fabricated.  You can tell if you look at it closely enough.  The head shouldn't be that size in proportion to the body, and if you look around the head area the background behind it is blurred...the rest of the picture isn't.

What you are describing is probably nothing more than the effects of perspective and focus.  Sometimes a picture can look odd when you have trouble arbitrating the angle and range of the subject with respect to thew cameraman due to the lack of actual physical depth in a 2d image.  I personally see no reason to doctor the images.  I have seen and touched a rabbit of that size.  I think the one I saw was a Flemish Giant, and at the time I had never seen such a ginormous bunny.  They're a real thing, look em up.

[Stygian]

Does anyone else realise that the North Korean government is too corrupt to let the masses have food?

I mean, they could easily feed their population with what they could produce, but the North Korean Government and their agriculture methods are too utterly corrupt and incompetent  to get food to the people.  To make matters worse, they refuse to acknowledge that.

In other words, he just wasted 12 good rabbits on a lost cause.

Lost cause?! Let me tell you... Every single person, every tiny dime and every last piece of stock, equipment and other property that we can remove from North Korea is another step to rooting that shithole out. Even better if the bunnies prove uncontrollable and ruin the country's economy.

Because Kim Jong Il must be chased down and torn apart by rabid dogs, then electrocuted and grilled out of existence.

[bill]

Incidentally, is anyone a fan of North Korea's official news?

[Valynth]

Does anyone else realise that the North Korean government is too corrupt to let the masses have food?

I mean, they could easily feed their population with what they could produce, but the North Korean Government and their agriculture methods are too utterly corrupt and incompetent  to get food to the people.  To make matters worse, they refuse to acknowledge that.

In other words, he just wasted 12 good rabbits on a lost cause.

Lost cause?! Let me tell you... Every single person, every tiny dime and every last piece of stock, equipment and other property that we can remove from North Korea is another step to rooting that shithole out. Even better if the bunnies prove uncontrollable and ruin the country's economy.

Because Kim Jong Il must be chased down and torn apart by rabid dogs, then electrocuted and grilled out of existence.

Considering he sold the bunnies for the cause of helping starving people, yeah the cause he was selling them for is lost in North Korea.

Also, if you out one dictatorship, there will always be another, even crazier, one to fill in the gap.

Lastly, this is putting stuff INTO North Korea and the bunnies are very controllable, otherwise breeders wouldn't grow them for so long.  Also, North Korea would rather destroy their equipment than let it fall into the hands of the "Facist Capitalists"

[superluser]

Well, I gotta say that the image at the top looks `shopped.  Doesn't mean it is, but the blurriness around the head makes it look that way.  Plus, the pose looks a lot like the Enron cat:



The other pictures (which look a heckuva lot less `shopped) from other reputable news sources have convinced me that the bunny is probably real.

[Brunhidden]

the bunny at top looks blurry and his hands look big because the picture is just some dude with a camera about a foot away from the bunnys face, so perspactive is funky with the bunny being so close...also many germans have huge hands, my own grandfather had palms the size of my face.

its not so much that the korean government dosent want the people to have food, its more of the idea that by spending the money on other things they will have a 'mighty army' and 'great nation' and all that rot, not to mention that kim has always urged the path of *insert big korean word i cant remember* which states that koreans should be self sufficent at all times and drastically increases thier loyalty to korea....yeah, right, what with importing most of thier food for the past twenty years and all i believe them. right now its an issue of critical mass- the government dosent want to cut military spending (especially now that they did the bomb thing, which is just sad. an average 'first' atomic bomb test usually ranges between 15 to 25 kilotons, for example the united states first bomb was 20 kilotons...kim jong 2 scored a whopping ONE kiloton. thats just sad) or lower any of its incredibly nessisary propaganda campaigns, but at the same time theyre finding that too many people are dying and it wont be long before theres an epidemic of sorts and dead people make poor soldiers.

why breed them big? well
- you get more meat per bunny
- each rabbit that breeds produces a greater yield as far as poundage of offspring
- theyre probably a damned sight easyer to catch then the little ones i tells ya

and no, they dont seem like they have the 'large breed dog' issues of being bred for size quickly, seeing as how it took this dude over 45 years to get them this big and thats at least 30 generations. in 30 generations of selective breeding in humans you could probably raise out height by six inches or add four cup sizes to our females. thats nice and slow, if you want freaky breeding issues look at cows- once uppon a time they barely produced more milk then a horse but we screwed them over so much that in the medieval era they would die if you didnt milk them regularly, and in the past few deckades that increased to NEEDING to be milked twice daily, even moreso is the realisation that within our lifespan we will see cows that will die if not milked THREE times a day.

i really dont think theese bunnies will really solve anything in korea, in order for them to actually get enough food and breed you would essentially have to release them all into the wild and deforest the whole damned country, after which the bunnies would leave and everyone starves AGAIN. the only things that will solve a problem like korea is if you get a democratic government that catches hell if the people are unhappy, free trade, and make sure that a good chunk of your peasents in the middle of rural villages actually pick up some damned farm impliments once in a while. people forget that last one, the only reason america can have so many people NOT farming is because the handfull that do each take care of a couple square miles of farmland while riding aorund on supprisingly high tech machines that each do the work of about 600 impovershed orientals and whatever livestock they choose to hit with a stick. so untill you HAVE those high tech machines and a whole bootayload of flat grasslands you had better make sure the majority of your population either knows what end of a hoe goes where or sells lots of cool things to americans who will give you food for them. korea does neither, and thus they starve, i find it almost funny how the majority of countries that hate americas guts would die of fammine in a year if americans did not continually send them free or pathetically cheap food and often just hand them huge wads of cash.

im still supprised nobody made fun of me running in terror from a bunny and having my patoot kicked six ways from sunday by someones side of breakfast sausage.

As you journey through life take a minute every now and then to give a thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something

[TheGreyRonin]

Posted by: Brunhidden da Muse
im still supprised nobody made fun of me running in terror from a bunny and having my patoot kicked six ways from sunday by someones side of breakfast sausage.

I would point and laugh like crazy at you, Brunhidden... Except I remember that President Jimmy Carter was once attacked at the White House by a little bunny, and had to keep dodging it one Easter before they could get it away from him.

Chased by big bunny = funny. World leader chased by ridiculously tiny bunny = hilarious.

[Aridas]

Incidentally, is anyone a fan of North Korea's official news?

Oh, you mean the one with a lot of unimportant news, and other news always complaining about this country or that country and how sinister they are?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Brunhidden: I would have made fun, but the first thing that leaped into mind was a book I read, Australian book, called "The Year Of The Angry Rabbit"

Interesting book. Basically, someone attempts to breed up a "super-myxomatosis" to kill the rabbit problem over there. Only, well, they have a rabbit that's been infected, and it seems reasonably happy. The person it bites, however, dies on the spot...

From there it gets -really- strange.

[superluser]

From there it gets -really- strange.

Do any white mice unexpectedly drop dead of myxomatosis?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

.... you'd have to find and read the book to find out.

[Brunhidden]

just make sure i dont bite anyone.

now im reminded about something involving burglars running away from an angry duck- is that more or less funny then an 8 year old getting creamed by a bunny?

Blessed be the meek, for they shall inherit six feet of the earth.

[GabrielsThoughts]

um bru...how many forums have you loaded this bunny story in?

[Jim Halisstrad]

Thats no bunny.... Thats a batlestation!

[Brunhidden]

um bru...how many forums have you loaded this bunny story in?

only two, this one and altermeta. nobody else lets me near thier forums and i thought it was intresting enough for those other guys who mostly do not come here to experience too.

You suck in a way that is not even sad anymore

[thegayhare]

now im reminded about something involving burglars running away from an angry duck- is that more or less funny then an 8 year old getting creamed by a bunny?

Well I've heard stories involving geese,  infact I know a few folks who own guard geese.

they are vicous birds with a nasty bite,  they won't kill you but they will cause alot of pain

I was talking to my sis about this and we windered if the bunny could be house broken,  or atleast litter trained.  I'd get one and give it something in apropriate for a name, like Killer, or Thrasher, or Savage.  A spikey leather collar and a doll size leather jacket

[Alondro]

*hmms*  A mutant bunny.  It's actually not too hard to isolate larger than normal phenotypes from rapidly-reproducing species.  We have strains of rats in our lab that get to be as big as housecats.  Monsterous things, they are.

[Valynth]

Considering how long and how many breedings this took, I'm gonna have to say it's evolution manipulation rather than gene manipulation.

After all, there was once a time when arachnids were roughly the size of a dog.  At least in theory.  It was mostly due to the high O2 concentration of the time period.  And I'm talking about long before the dinosaurs.

[ITOS]

I have eaten bunnies, they were tough and didn't taste too good. Still, better than starving I guess.

Thats no bunny.... Thats a batlestation!

Spacestation!