In the Middle Ages, the European bison, or wisent, was still wandering about in herds, but it was quickly becoming extinct like its relative, the aurochs. There seem to have been small herds still in the deepest forests in France in the 15th century. They were vanishing in Macedonia in the Late Classical period, but some survived until the late medieval in remote parts of Bulgaria. The Białowieża Forest on the border of Poland and Belorussia had the last surviving herd. In modern times, some of the handful of bison from zoos were released back to this forest, where there is again a viable herd. Polish bison conservationists have sent animals to many other countries since then, and recently some bison were even released in an English forest.
Hares were native to Northern Europe, while the smaller, fatter rabbits originated in the Atlas Mountains and Iberia. Hares are larger and thinner, with longer ears, but although they look like rabbits to us, genetically they are different: 48 chromosomes, where rabbits have 44. Hares are adapted to living in the wild without burrows: their young are born with eyes open, ready to fend for themselves very quickly.
There’s no record of hares ever being domesticated, but they have always been eaten. This detail is gross, but traditionally, hares were cooked with their blood. In fact, hares were “jugged,” which I used to think meant something like canned. No. It means that they are hung up dead so that the blood will collect inside, instead of draining out. Hares are not kosher for Jews and neither is blood, so that’s definitely one dish that medieval German Jews were not consuming.
Modernization has not been kind to wild cats, although domestic ones have been fat and happy. Smaller wild cats persisted throughout Europe, and there is still a subspecies native to Scotland. But in the medieval mountains, there were lynx, and even Asiatic lions still lived in remote parts of Syria, Turkey and Greece. In Islamic culture and in the Ottoman Empire, lions were much used as symbols of courage, though they were rarely seen. Medieval Europeans often had no idea what a lion looked like, although certainly they had heard of them. One report said that lions gave birth to dead kittens who then came to life, and it was generally believed.
All of the small animals that live in and near water were populous in medieval Europe: otters, beavers, muskrats. Also populous, as today, were the small field animals: foxes, hedgehogs, badgers, and all kinds of weasels, including the northern ones prized for fur. In the mountains, there were many wild goats such as ibex and chamois. Naturally, we can fill in the squirrels, mice, shrews, voles, moles and rats as well. These are found all over the world, then and now. Later to be famous for spreading disease, marmots (ground squirrels) were also all over Europe and Asia — and along the Silk Road.
Northern Europe does not seem to have been home to venomous snakes, in general; mostly they had rat snakes and whip snakes, both predators of little creatures but harmless to humans. The Mediterranean region of course is another matter: vipers and adders galore. Some vipers lived as far north as Austria. While snakes were part of the legends and lore of Greece and all over Africa and Asia, they didn’t tend to feature so much in Northern European stories.