Rabbit Topics

• genus sylvilagus
• amami rabbit
• chewing the cud
• cottontail rabbit
• european rabbit
• maximum nutrition
• digestion process
• o clock
• exercise pen
• hares
• warrens
• herbivores
• shima
• burrow
• pellets
• rabbits
• burrows
• safe place
• six hours
• endangered species

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Rabbit, Rabbit

There are seven different genera in the family classified as rabbits, including the European rabbit ( Oryctolagus cuniculus ), Cottontail rabbit (genus Sylvilagus ; 13 species), and the Amami rabbit ( Pentalagus furnessi , endangered species on Amami shima, Japan).

Rabbits reingest their own droppings (rather than chewing the cud as do cows and many other herbivores) to digest their food further and extract sufficient nutrients.

While out of the burrow, the rabbit will occasionally reingest its soft, partially digested pellets; this is rarely observed, since the pellets are reingested as they are produced. Reingestion is most common within the burrow between 8 o'clock in the morning and 5 o'clock in the evening, being carried out intermittently within that period.

These pellets remain intact for up to six hours in the stomach; the bacteria within continue to digest the plant carbohydrates. The soft feces form here and contain up to five times the vitamins of hard feces. After being excreted, they are eaten whole by the rabbit and redigested in a special part of the stomach. This double-digestion process enables rabbits to use nutrients that they may have missed during the first passage through the gut, and thus ensures that maximum nutrition is derived from the food they eat.

In contrast, hares are generally born with hair and are able to see (precocial). All rabbits except the cottontail rabbit live underground in burrows or warrens, while hares live in simple nests above the ground (as does the cottontail rabbit), and usually do not live in groups. Hares are generally larger than rabbits, with longer ears, and have black markings on their fur. Hares have not been domesticated, while rabbits are often kept as house pets. In gardens, they are typically kept in hutches small, wooden, house-like boxes that protect the rabbits from the environment and predators.

House rabbits typically have an indoor pen or cage and a rabbit-safe place to run and exercise, such as an exercise pen, living room or family room. Rabbits can be trained to use a litter box and some can learn to come when called. Domestic rabbits that do not live indoors can also often serve as companions for their owners, typically living in an easily accessible hutch outside the home. Some pet rabbits live in outside hutches during the day for the benefit of fresh air and natural daylight and are brought inside at night.

Pet rabbits are often provided additional space in which to get exercise, simulating the open space a rabbit would traverse in the wild. Exercise pens or lawn pens are often used to provide a safe place for rabbits to run.

Rabbits as pets can find their companionship with a variety of creatures, including humans, other rabbits, guinea pigs, and sometimes even cats and dogs. Rabbits do not make good pets for small children because they do not know how to stay quiet, calm, and gentle around rabbits. As prey animals, rabbits are alert, timid creatures that startle easily. They have fragile bones, especially in their backs, that require support on the belly and bottom when picked up. Children 10 years old and older usually have the maturity required to care for a rabbit.

Rabbit meat was once commonly sold in Sydney, Australia, the sellers of which giving the name to the rugby league team the South Sydney Rabbitohs, but quickly became unpopular after the disease myxomatosis was introduced in an attempt to wipe out the feral rabbit population (see also Rabbits in Australia).

Snare or guns along with dogs are usually employed when catching wild rabbits for food. In many regions, rabbits are also bred for meat, a practice called cuniculture. Rabbits can then be killed by hitting the back of their heads, a practice from which the term rabbit punch is derived. Rabbit meat is a source of high quality protein.

Angora rabbits are bread for their long, fine hair, which can be sheared and harvested like sheep wool. Rabbits are very good producers of manure; additionally, their urine, being high in nitrogen, makes lemon trees very productive. Their milk may also be of great medicinal or nutritional benefit due to its high protein content.

In Europe, where rabbits are farmed on a large scale, they are protected against myxomatosis and calicivirus with a genetically modified virus. The virus was developed in Spain, and is beneficial to rabbit farmers. If it were to make its way into wild populations in areas such as Australia, it could create a population boom, as those diseases are the most serious threats to rabbit survival. Rabbits in Australia are considered to be such a pest that land owners are legally obliged to control them.

Originally, the word for an adult rabbit was coney or cony , while rabbit referred only to the young animals. The word rabbit , however, mostly replaced the older word during the 19th century after coney became a vulgarism by analogy to the word cunt (widely considered vulgar) due to their similar pronunciation. When coney was used to refer to rabbits, its pronunciation was changed to [1] (rhymes with "phoney"), instead of the original [2] (rhymes with "money") because of this. Shipley, Joseph Twadell, The Origins of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots , JHU Press, 1984, p.129 Carney, Edward, A survey of English spelling , Routledge, 1994, p.469 Morton, Mark, Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities , Insomniac Press, 2004, p.251 Allen & Burridge, Forbidden Words , Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.242 More recently, the term kit has been used to refer to a young rabbit. A group of young rabbits is referred to as a kindle . Young hares are called leverets , and this term is sometimes informally applied to any young rabbit. Male rabbits are called bucks and females does . A group of rabbits or hares is often called a fluffle in parts of Northern Canada.

This is thought to date back to early times in the quarrying industry, where piles of extracted stone (not fit for sale) were built into tall rough walls (to save space) directly behind the working quarry face; the rabbit's natural tendency to burrow would weaken these "walls" and cause collapse, often resulting in injuries or even death.

It is said that a public house (on the island) can be cleared of people by calling out the word rabbit and while this was very true in the past, it has gradually become more fable than fact over the past 50 years.

This is not true. However, in the 1920s it was discovered that if the urine contained the hCG, a hormone found in the bodies of pregnant women, the rabbit would display ovarian changes. The rabbit would then be killed to have its ovaries inspected, but the death of the rabbit was not the indicator of the results. Later revisions of the test allowed technicians to inspect the ovaries without killing the animal. A similar test involved injecting Xenopus frogs to make them lay eggs, but animal assays for pregnancy have been made obsolete by faster, cheaper, and simpler modern methods.

Source: Wikipedia > Rabbit