Category: bunny

Today, Friday bunnyblogging is brought you you by the letter P… for poop.

1. gnawing
2. eating
3. exploring
4. frolicking
5. napping
6. pooping
7. digging
8. getting the humans’ attention
9. warning the humans of danger

Rabbits are extremely efficient eating machines. However, they eat a diet that’s quite high in fiber- cellulose, to be exact. Cellulose is a primary component of plant cell walls that’s extremely strong and difficult to break down for digestion.

Most mammals can’t break down cellulose, which is why:

1. The proper function of our (mammals’) digestive systems often depends on getting a certain amount of cellulose in our diets, in order to build bulk that helps things pass through the system. If rabbits don’t get enough fiber, they  can go into gut stasis and die.
2. Herbivores, especially grazing animals that eat a lot of grass, have symbiotic bacteria in their guts that do the cellulose-breaking down for them. If you’ve ever seen a cow chewing its cud, it’s re-processing partly digested grass courtesy of the bacteria, and swallowing it for a second round of digestion.

Rabbits don’t chew their cud, but they do “recycle” their own poop- at least some of it. Most rabbit poop consists of hard, dry, grassy pellets (assuming the bunny is getting a good hay-filled diet). Because this poop is not broken down very far, there is a lot of it. Some of the poop has been processed for an extra long time in the rabbit’s cecum, a specialized intestinal chamber where the symbiotic bacteria reside. This poop, called cecal pellets, is soft and vitamin rich. While rabbits typically don’t re-eat their regular poop, they do eat these cecal pellets again. This is how they gain nutrients from a mainly grassy diet.

So fiber- and poop- are obviously important for bunnies. Luckily, the little beasties are litter-trainable, so there is some place for the large quantities of poo to go.

One benefit of the large amounts of partially-processed plant matter is that it makes great fertilizer! If you have a garden, you can just add the poop to the soil, and the poo quanta will break down over time. For houseplants, you can either crush up the poo manually and add it to plant pots, or soak it in water for a bit till it breaks down, then water the plants with the poo-water. I’ve only tried the water trick once, and it was pretty stinky- I now just go the crushing up route.

So there you go-bunny behavior #6: pooping.

Yes, we have now come to what is perhaps the easiest bunny behavior to document: napping.

1. gnawing
2. eating
3. exploring
4. frolicking
5. napping
6. pooping
7. digging
8. getting the humans’ attention
9. warning the humans of danger

While Noe has a few favorite places to nap, she’ll pretty much nap anywhere. Her favorites currently are on a chair under the dining room table and under a chair on the porch. Lately, she’s been crawling between the side of the bed and the blanket that drapes over it down to the floor, and napping there. Though that has to get pretty hot for her.

Rabbits do sometimes sleep with their eyes open- they’re alert little critters. Noe will often nap with her back to a wall, so she has a good view (though her sense of hearing is more important) of the room. She also likes sleeping in doorways, so she can keep an ear to each room.

Probably the cutest thing she does is go into REM sleep and dream. Her nose and whiskers start twitching, her ears move back and forth, and she makes little chewing motions. She’s usually in “loaf mode” when she does this, so we don’t see paw twitching like sleeping dogs have. But it’s still very cute.

We don’t have good bunny dreaming videos, so here’s a random one from YouTube. Use it for a Friday moment of relaxation.

Today, we’re up to #4 in our Noe behavior series: frolicking! To recap:

1. gnawing
2. eating
3. exploring
4. frolicking
5. napping
6. pooping
7. digging
8. getting the humans’ attention
9. warning the humans of danger

Sadly, I do not have any photos of Noe frolicking behavior. We didn’t take many photos of it when she was young, and now that she’s older her nutty bounding around has definitely tapered off. Luckily, there are plenty of frolicking bunny videos on YouTube… though I’m not sure why so many of them have soundtracks attached. (Edit to add: you’ll have to click through to YouTube to watch this video, apparently b/c of the soundtrack.)

Bunny frolicking includes mad dashing around, head tossing, and “binkys”- those laps and flips you see in the video. Young rabbits can keep up this sort of thing for a while, but nowadays Noe will generally do a few laps around a room, toss a few half-binkys in there, and then lay down to rest. It is pretty cool that she’s almost 9 and still doing this sort of thing!

I guess playing with toys also fits into the “frolicking” category. I do have a photo of her napping after playing with one of her ring toys. (Trust me, I will have plenty of photos for next week’s “napping” post.) So, here is Noe post-frolic:

Just a photo today-Noe displaying her rabbit’s feet.

Aren’t they much better on the rabbit’s legs, instead of flayed, de-boned, dyed hot pink, and riveted to a keyring?

…Hmm, this came out more morbid than expected.

Continuing our series on bunny behavior today- let’s start by looking at the Noe behavior list:

1. gnawing
2. eating
3. exploring
4. frolicking
5. napping
6. pooping
7. digging
8. getting the humans’ attention
9. warning the humans of danger

Looks like we’re up to #3: exploring.

Rabbits are intensely curious creatures. They have poor vision (except for movement), and it seems like this translates into an obsessive need to investigate their surroundings, to see if anything has moved and will become an obstacle in case of the need to escape from raptor attack. While the chance of raptor attack in our apartment is pretty slim, Noe did spend two days with a cockatiel once, so perhaps that heightened her keen instinctual awareness of danger from above (I also hear that the cockatiel was fairly pouty after her bunny-visiting experience, but that’s another story).

So Noe explores. She generally checks her usual escape routes once a day, but when a new object appears, this warrants further investigation.

And there are certain places that she usually has no access to that always warrant investigation. Namely, closets, cupboards, and the laundry room.

She has a routine in the laundry room. Whenever we open the door and she’s nearby, she’ll make a beeline for the doorway. If her way is clear (no feet or laundry baskets in the way), she’ll then hop behind the washing machine. Usually, she’ll make a circuit around the machine, then come out. However, if we’re already calling her to come out, she’ll stay behind the machine, just sitting there, until we poke her to get her to leave. If we give up and don’t call her, she will often come out on her own, thump to get our attention, then scamper back behind the machine again. This is obviously a bunny game.

As mentioned previously, Noe has a fairly wide range of behavior. It surprises some people when I tell them she’s litterbox-trained or pushy or does things to get our attention. It seems that a lot of people have ideas about rabbits that are shaped by an experience with rabbits confined to an outdoor hutch, or mental images of rabbits as lab animals huddled in cages. In these settings, the rabbits aren’t really given the capacity to develop interesting behaviors- and, let’s face it, they probably don’t think much of the humans who just come to feed and water them, and clean their cages.

At any rate, an abbreviated list of bunny behaviors that Noe exhibits includes gnawing, eating, exploring, frolicking, napping, pooping, digging, getting the humans’ attention, and warning the humans of danger. Today, let’s move on to behavior #2: eating.

Rabbits in the wild eat a high-fiber diet. Like other grass eaters, they forage most of the day. Their guts are set up to continually process lots of plant matter, and they can get sick quickly if they’re on a low-fiber diet. Gut stasis is a dangerous problem if rabbits are left without fibrous food to munch on, so rabbits need a constant supply of grass or hay.

Of course, rabbits also need a variety of veggies, for vitamins, minerals, and just plain variety. Noe has a bit of a problem with oxalate-containing veggies: too much of these give her bladder crystals. So we have to limit her intake of certain types of veggies, like spinach. As you can see, she has no problem eating other veggies.

Noe’s third main nutritional source is pellets. Often times, people with rabbits will assume that the rabbit food pellets you get at pet stores are nutritionally complete, and are all you need to feed a bunny. This actually isn’t the case– pellets are high in protein and fat, and are comparable to feeding your rabbit cheeseburgers all the time. Pellets as a sole food source are great when you want to have a rabbit that gets large quickly (e.g., you’re raising it to eat), not so great if you want a healthy pet. Noe gets a few tablespoons of pellets a day. Sometimes we put them into the “pellet ball,” which has a small hole in it. She rolls it along the floor till the pellets come out, then snarfs them up.

Finally, treats. For Noe, treats are usually little bites of fruit when we’re eating an apple, prunes, banana, etc. She most definitely does not get cookies, but I bowed to the cuteness and will include this photo here. …and yes, Noe has done this sort of thing before.

Contrary to what you might believe about rabbits, they have many and varied interests. In this photo, you can see evidence for Interest #1: Gnawing. In no particular order, her other interests include (but are not limited to): eating, exploring, frolicking, napping, pooping, digging, getting the humans’ attention, and warning the humans of danger. These will be covered later.

Gnawing is good practice for one of her other interests, eating. It also helps file down her ever-growing teeth. She also gnaws on wood when she has poor gut motility- one reason why you should always provide a bunny with lots of yummy, high-fiber hay.

So how many things in this photo has Noe been chewing on?

1. Stack of magazines on table
2. Paper towel roll, provided to distract her from bookshelf
3. Bookshelf (lower shelf and upright)
4. Cardboard, subsequently placed over bookshelf to prevent damage to bookshelf

After looking at this site’s information about ways to entertain your pet (and keep then out of trouble) by giving them opportunities to “forage,” we decided to try the idea with Noe. Basically, housepets can be entertained by being given the opportunity to search for food in unexpected places- forage. This lets them exercise their minds (and bodies) while they get yummy treats.

Since Noe’s a rabbit, we weren’t sure how she would take to the “now hunt for your food” idea. But she actually likes it a lot! All we’ve been doing has been shoving some fresh hay (orchard grass rather than her usual timothy) into a toilet paper tube, and making her work to get at it.

As you can see, she quickly figured out that she can get to the hay from the ends of the tube. She’ll usually flip it back and forth a few times, pulling the hay out. This next photo even shows some green drool from her messy eating:

It takes her a while to pull all the hay out of the tube, and she’s usually tired afterward. It’s probably hard work to hold that tube up for so long.

Of course, a lot of hay gets scattered around the floor, but it’s much better than a bored bunny gnawing on the bookshelves- both for her and for us.

Here’s another blast from the past: Noe, about 5 months old.

One of her favorite places to nap was under the couch. Doesn’t she look cute and innocent?

The checkered background you see is my foam futon, stored against the wall. A few months later, Noe realized the awesome digging potential that the futon represented, and ripped a big hole in it. Foam everywhere. And of course the hole went right through the center of the futon, pretty much rendering it useless for guests to sleep on.

She also gnawed into the TV cable, which was peeking out from under the futon. Luckily, she suffered no ill effects from that, but it was a lesson for me in bunnyproofing.

I’ve just realized that the last several bunny posts have pretty much been about Noe’s irritating habits. I’ll have to think of something else for next time…