Do you eat the ears or tails first?

Online research involving 28,113 people has found that 59% of respondents preferred to eat the ears of chocolate rabbits first, while only 4% indicated that they started with the tail or feet. Apparently 33% claimed to have no preference. [Editor’s note — it is extremely hard to start on the flanks.]

Seeking to determine if a pattern of traumatic rabbit auricular amputations exists, the researchers, led by Dr Kathleen Yaremchuk, searched Google for reports and images of rabbit auricular amputations using the key terms ‘chocolate’, ‘Easter Bunny’, ‘rabbit’, ‘Easter’, ‘ears’, ‘amputation’ and ‘bunny’. The searches were limited to the five years between January 2012 and January 2017.

This further data mining established that auricular amputations of confectionery rabbits is particularly seasonal — with a statistically significant increase in mention of the amputations occurring during spring according to the article ‘Seasonality of auricular amputations in rabbits’, published in the journal Laryngoscope.

This research, however, shows a distinct Northern Hemisphere bias as traumatic amputations in confectionery rabbits definitely peak in the autumn months in the Southern Hemisphere — usually in the weeks leading up to and including Easter each year.

Although several reconstructive efforts might be used to re-attach the ears, this may be a futile effort, since often the rest of the rabbit soon succumbs to a similar fate according to the study.

“It was interesting to discover that few other confectionery symbols, such as Santa, succumb to isolated defects, like the chocolate bunnies do,” said Yaremchuk.