‘Frankenstein’ rabbits with tentacles sprouting from faces spreading across US

‘Frankenstein’ rabbits with black tendrils sprouting from their faces have been spotted in the US.

Looking like they’re straight out of HBO’s fungus horror show, The Last of Us, these mutated bunnies have been spotted in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Rabbits have long called the town home, often seen hopping from garden to garden searching for food.

But local resident Susan Mansfield said she recently saw one with ‘black quills or black toothpicks sticking out all around’.

She told local TV station KOSA: ‘I thought he would die off during the winter, but he didn’t, he came back a second year, and it grew.’

Sightings of the zombie bunnies date back to at least last year, when a Reddit user shared photographs of a rabbit in her garden covered in horns.

‘Is this a growth or what’s going on? I feel bad for it but he seems fine,’ the user said.

Now, state wildlife officials are urging anyone who sees these infected to stay well away and to ‘not touch them’.

The bunnies are infected with a virus, which cannot be transmitted to humans, called cottontail rabbit papilloma virus.

Also called Shope papilloma virus, it causes raised, red lesions to form on on a rabbit’s head, eyelids, neck, shoulders and feet.

These marks later bloat into harmless black tumours called keratinised papillomas. Sometimes, however, the warts progress into squamous cell carcinoma, a serious form of skin cancer.

The virus is spread by mosquitoes and ticks, with cases peaking in summer when the biting insects are most active.

There is no known cure, and while most infected cottontails survive, the growths can limit a rabbit’s ability to eat, causing it to starve to death.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife says: ‘For this reason, CPW does not recommend euthanising rabbits with papillomas unless they are interfering with the rabbit’s ability to eat and drink.’

The agency added that there is some risk of the virus transmitting to pet rabbits, ‘especially if rabbits are housed outdoors where they may contact wild rabbits or biting insects’,

It adds: ‘In domestic rabbits, the disease is more severe than in wild rabbits and should be treated by a veterinarian.’

‘Horned’ rabbits, colloquially called jackalopes, were described in journals between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Historians believe that sightings of these mythical horned creatures may have been rabbits suffering from papilloma.

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