Hare

Latin name: Lepus

Other names:

A timid beast that runs fast

The hare is a timid beast, and a fast runner. It can change sex, so that it is sometimes male and sometimes female.

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 8, 81): The white hares of the Alps are thought to eat snow in the winter, for they turn color when the snow melts. Some say that the hare is as many years old as it has folds in its bowels, and that it is a hermaphrodite that can reproduce without a mate.

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 1:23): The hare (lepus) is so called from levipes (light foot), because it runs fast. It is a timid animal.