I Had Always Thought That Rabbits Walked Or Hopped,

I never knew that one type of rabbit, 

walked on its front legs only doing a walking handstand! photograph video screen shot, apparently the Sauteur d’Alfort, also known as the Alfort jumping rabbit have baffled scientists for more than a decade, experiments conducted as far back as 1943 showed that the inability to hop displayed by the sauteur d’Alfort rabbit was not a learned behaviour, but the result of a recessive gene. However, until recently, no one knew exactly what gene that was, or how it prevented the animal from doing what all other rabbits find perfectly natural,

“With modern technology, it’s straightforward to go from a simple recessive disorder to finding the genes,” Leif Andersson, a geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden, told Gizmodo. “The expectation was there was something wrong with the spinal cord, because they don’t coordinate their forelegs and the hind legs.” that expectation proved correct, as a study conducted by scientists at Uppsala University shows that a warped gene called RORB (RAR-related orphan receptor beta) rendered them incapable of jumping. RORB helps pass information and links the left and right side of the body – which is essential for coordinating limb movements – but the warped gene caused the rabbits to over-flex their hindlegs, making jumping impossible, “What’s happening when you’re moving is that you have these neurons firing all the time, and they coordinate muscle contractions and receive feedback on the balance of the different limbs,” Andersson said. “This coordination of muscle contraction is not correct in these rabbits.” handstanding rabbits, I never even knew they existed!