Rabbit hair (also called rabbit fur, cony, comb, coney or lapin) is the fur of the common rabbit. It is most commonly used in the making of fur hats and coats, and is considered quite valuable.
The hair of a rabbit can be divided into three types:
- guide hairs: external hairs, long and rough
- guard hairs (also called "barbes"): four guard hairs surround each guide hair, sealing the coat
- down: there are around sixty down hairs for each guide hair; they are very short and barely visible, and serve to insulate the rabbit.
A selectively bred rabbit from the 1900s, the Castor Rex, has guard hairs of the same length as the down, but this is atypical.
Rabbit hair is commonly considered a byproduct of the ordinary process of breeding rabbits for meat, and as such is manufactured in vast quantities in England and France; more than seventy million pelts a year in France alone. However, the quality of fur from these rabbits tends to be low, as the rabbits are slaughtered before reaching twelve weeks old and still have the infant coat.
In temperate climates, the highest quality furs are obtained in winter from rabbits over five months old, when the thickness of the fur is even; at other times of year, varying degrees of hair shedding causes uneven patches in the fur. The coat is also at its thickest at this time of year. The highest quality pelts are suitable for clothing, and typically constitute less than half of all pelts collected.
The hair of the Angora rabbit is plucked and used as fiber, rather than as pelts.
Famous quotes containing the words rabbit and/or hair:
“I positively think that ladies who are always enceinte quite disgusting; it is more like a rabbit or guinea-pig than anything else and really it is not very nice.”
—Victoria (1819–1901)
“As long as the “woman’s work” that some men do is socially devalued, as long as it is defined as woman’s work, as long as it’s tacked onto a “regular” work day, men who share it are likely to develop the same jagged mouth and frazzled hair as the coffee-mug mom. The image of the new man is like the image of the supermom: it obscures the strain.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)