THE traditional belief that rabbits were first tamed in 600 AD has been called into question by Oxford University researchers.

It has long been thought that French monks domesticated them as they were a prized food as a 'meat substitute' during Lent.

But researchers using genetic testing methods have found a number of different timeframes for events, with more questions than answers.

Scientists from the department of archaeology tested dating methods to challenge whether our relationship and affection for fluffy bunnies dated back to any single event or if it is instead better explained as a continuum that has evolved over time.

Despite being one of the most recently domesticated animals, the team found that none of the techniques agreed on the timing of the domestication of the rabbit, and each method presented its own issues.

Dr Greger Larson, lead-author and director of the Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network at Oxford University, said: "The historical evidence credits the Romans with the earliest written records of rabbits and as being the first to use hutches.

"The archaeological evidence shows that rabbits were hunted during the Palaeolithic in the Iberian Peninsula and southwest France.

"By the Middle Ages rabbits were considered a high-status food and regularly transported across Europe, although it took more than 2,000 years for differences between wild and domestic rabbits to be visible in their bones. "Lastly, attempts to date the timing of rabbit domestication using genetic methods were clouded by uncertainty in the mutation rate."