'Tis The Season To Throw Another Baby Bunny On The Barbie

It's all the other saint Gregory's fault.

Cruelty to  rabbits is always with us, and it has long been assumed  that raising  them  for  meat   in  cunicularia  became  a  medieval  growth industry after Pope Gregory  declared it  lawful  to eat  laurices- fetal or new-born  bunnies,  during  Lent,  the  theory  being that since  unborn rabbits were aswim in amniotic fluid, they must be fish. 

Denialists who deem climate science an inferior  branch of metaphysics may hail this as  the  Wisdom of the Ancients,  but were there  really enough  fast days  to foster a medieval  bunny-fetus industry?  You bet- about 180 a year.

But now that molecular biology has been brought to bear on this curious bunny  tale,  it  appears  the vegan-unfriendly story has got its saints crossed along with its genes.

Whole thing at :
 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/science/rabbits-pope-domestication.html