BBC Learnings · Section 10

Rabbits cuddly friends or cunning tricksters

Rob, when we think of Easter, what do we think of? Chocolate.

Level: B1 · 125 sentences

Transcript

Rob, when we think of Easter,
what do we think of? Chocolate.
Well, yes, chocolate Easter eggs are an obvious symbol of Easter.
But there is an animal people often associate with Easter.
rabbits – cute, adorable and fluffy.
What's not to like about a rabbit?
Well, not everyone is a fan of them.
By not a fan of, I mean they don't like them.
Some people think they are a pest.
But we'll be telling you more about rabbits shortly.
That's good to know.
Well, I'll tell you what I am a fan
of and that is your quiz questions.
So what are you going to ask me today?
It's all about wild rabbits.
In the last rabbit survey in 1995,
how many were estimated to exist in the UK?
Was it a 370,500, b 3,750,000 or c 37,500,000?
I know rabbits are everywhere in the UK,
but not 37 million of them,
so I'll go for b 3,750,000.
Well, you'll have to wait until the end
of the programme to find out.
But you're right when you say
rabbits are everywhere in the UK.
It's probably true in other countries too.
You could say they are endemic,
meaning very common or strongly established in a place or situation.
But are they a typically British wild animal?
They are now, but it's believed
they were brought to the country by invaders.
Some say the Romans, others the Normans.
But they eventually spread across the UK.
Victoria Dickinson is author of a book called Rabbit
and she's been telling the BBC Radio 4 programme,
Costing the Earth, about what helped them spread.
It was really by the middle
of the 17th century when people really started to think
about rabbit as being particularly British.
And certainly there were more rabbits
in Britain than in the rest of Europe.
There was a calculation done that there are over 400 villages
and towns in Britain with the word warren in their name.
So the rabbits were raised in Britain,
but they really kept to their warrens until
there was the rise of fox hunting.
When their predators disappeared, rabbits do what rabbits do best,
and they started to multiply and become
wild, feral rabbits throughout the land.
So Victoria knows a thing or two about rabbits
and said the word warren used
in town and village names is evidence
that they've been in the UK since the mid-17th century.
A warren is the area underground
where rabbits live with lots of holes and connected passages.
But today we use the word warren
to mean a building or part of a town
where there are lots of confusing passageways or streets.
It's a kind of place where you get lost.
But it was rabbit warrens where rabbits
would live until hunting, particularly fox hunting,
was introduced and that killed many of the rabbits' predators.
A predator is an animal that hunts and kills another animal.
Now Victoria was talking about feral rabbits, so wild rabbits,
not the sort people keep as pets in a rabbit hutch.
Moving on, I'm interested to know
why not everyone loves these cute little creatures.
I mean, think of the rabbit
characters in the Beatrix Potter stories.
Well, they weren't always well behaved
and Victoria Dickinson spoke to the Costing the Earth programme about this.
What word did she use to describe rabbits
having the two opposite sides to their character?
The rabbit is a paradoxical animal.
It has a lot of faces,
if you will. It's both wild and tame.
It's timid, but also has its reputation as trickster rabbit,
if you think of Peter Cottontail
or you think of Brer Rabbit.
And I think our relationship with rabbit
is the rabbit of the nursery rhyme,
the rabbit of childhood, or you think of Peter Rabbit.
She said that rabbits are paradoxical animals.
That's the word that describes them having two opposing characteristics.
Yes, we think of them as wild, maybe a trickster,
someone who deceives people to get what they want.
Like Peter. What a cheeky rabbit!
But we also think of rabbits as tame.
We have nursery rhymes about them.
Kids have soft, cuddly rabbit toys.
I say that they're the perfect symbol for Easter.
OK, Rob, if you say so.
But now let me give the answer
to the question I set you earlier.
In the last survey of rabbits in 1995,
how many were estimated to exist in the UK?
Was it a 370,500, b 3,750,000 or c 37,500,000?
Rob, what did you say? I said b 3,750,000.
Well, you're wrong, Rob.
A government survey put the population
in the UK at 37.5 million.
so a lot more.
But despite its reputation, a recent survey suggests
rabbit numbers in the UK have declined
by around 60% over the last 20 years.
That is sad news.
But let's cheer ourselves up with a recap
of the vocabulary we've discussed today,
starting with a fan of. When someone
is a fan of something, they are keen
on it – they like it a lot.
If you're not a fan of something, you don't like it.
We mentioned endemic, meaning very common
or strongly established in a place or situation.
And we talked about a warren,
an underground area where rabbits live,
but also a building or a part of a town
where there are lots of confusing passageways or streets
where it's easy to get lost.
A predator is an animal that hunts and kills another animal.
Paradoxical describes things that have two opposing
characteristics, making it hard to understand.
And a trickster is someone who deceives
people to get what they want.
Well, I'm no trickster.