Attack of the giant rabbit

Yep. On the island of Minorca (off Spain) there was once a giant bunny. Now 12kg is not enormous for a mammal in general, but it is for a rabbit (they average 2 kg). One of the downers in this fluffy bit of news is that you might not recognize the animal as a rabbit. It didn't hop and apparently had small ears. (That reminds me a bit of the largest of the rodents, the capybara, with small ears relative to its size when compared to rats and mice). But this is a reminder that animals are not bound to appear the way we think they should! The wonderfully named Nuralagus rex, (roughly, "Minorcan king rabbit"), died out about three million years ago.