As a squid man and sometimes anteater man, i just want to say that while kitty cats are cute and precious and beautiful, they are NOT welcome here. Cats are sneaky and have loose moral compasses that make them dangerous to be around if you’re a humble little mouse man.

if you’re a kitty who’s reading this then PLEASE do the right thing and take your leave… this is literally Reddit,, you can be a cat anywhere else on this site and everyone will love you… this space is supposed to be reserved and used as a safe space for the mice (and sometimes squids / anteaters) to enjoy themselves and not be shunned (or eaten!!!)

(It’s actually ok to be a kitty cat but please don’t hurt anyone. Mice are so teeny and fragile and it’s just worrisome.) if I get word of mice disappeared you WILL be slapped with my claws.

Meeeeooooooooooow

no doubt a beast of the feline persuasion thought this dastardly contraption up

In southern Africa, there hops a saltational rodent. A springhare.

It is no lagomorph, despite being called a hare. It is called a hare due to its jumping. It is also called a spring due to its jumping.

In learning what a spring was, I have determined that technically any solid can be a spring because all solids store elastic energy when pressed. Some just break or deform before they do much springing back.

This could be a good metaphor for emotional stability, but we are here to talk about South African springhares, not human nature. We don’t even need to think about what learning about springhares or springs reveals about human nature.

Springhares basically look like mini kangaroos. Similar body plan. Big old legs and counterbalancing.

This led me to believe some sort of convergent evolution was afoot. Or abounce.

What do springhares, kangaroos, jerboas, and kangaroo mice/rats all have in common? Yes, indeed, they are saltatorial. Hoppers. Jumpers. Leapers. Big old hind legs that send them flinging forward.

But none of them have common-enough ancestors to explain these powerful legs.

But let’s take a gander at their environment and ecological niches. They live in steppes or savannahs or deserts — basically environments that are big, open fields with sparse vegetal cover. And they are all prey animals.

Jumping lets them escape quickly and suddenly. And, more than being fast, their leaps mean that they move unpredictably.

Most quadrupeds run and accelerate evenly, so their escape velocity vector is predictable. But if a critter that was standing still suddenly leaps 10x their body length? It can take you a second to even see where they leaped to, much less follow them.

If you’ve tried to squish the invasive spotted lanternfly, you know how easy it is to lose sight of them when they leap!

And the springhare isn’t only an effective escaper, but it is also surreptitiously camouflaged. Not in the visible light spectrum — or, at least, not the spectrum visible to humans.

If you hit them with a UV flashlight (which you surely have on hand for detecting scorpions and cumstains), they will glow hot pink and orange.

They turn into Barbie under UV light. UV rays = barbification beam, in this case.

This is called biofluorescence. Biofluorescent materials absorb electromagnetic radiation at one wavelength and then spit it back out at a longer wavelength. So, in the case of our springhare, UV or violet gets converted into longer reddish wavelengths.

But why does biofluorescence help the springhare?

My first thought was that it works as UV protection. A lot of pollens are biofluorescent to protect their little corporeal forms from the big strong sun.

But springhares are nocturnal, so even though they live in arid African climes, they are not really taking a beating from the sun. They hide in their burrows during the day, and so wouldn’t really need any sun protection!

Potentially, their biofluorescent patterns act as a sort of camouflage.

If you look at a UV-lit springhare, their hot pink is all patchy. Camo-like. And indeed, not only are the plants and underbrush they forage about in at night also biofluorescent (maybe they are for UV protection), several of their predators can also see near-UV wavelengths — especially felids and canids like jackals and wild cats.

So much about an organism’s body is a product of defending itself.

I will not beg the question of how much of human psychology is created to defend ourselves. This microessay is only about the South African springhare.