Eating, sleeping, and toileting behaviours

Behaviours associated with rabbits’ daily activities

Begging • Biting • Butt twitching • Caecotrophs/caecal droppings (eating) • Chewing • Clearing routes • Digging • Dreaming • Drinking • Droppings • Eating • Eating droppings • Foraging • Grazing • Nibbling • Rearing up • Scattering droppings • Sheltering • Sleeping • Spraying urine • Standing on hind legs • Throwing/tossing • Toilet behaviours • Urinating • Yawning

 

Behaviours summary

Wild rabbits’ eating, sleeping, and toileting behaviours are inextricably linked to their prey animal survival instincts, and also to their social nature. They eat and sleep in their social groups, at times which are determined by their crepuscular nature. This timing of rabbits’ activity, along with communal vigilance provided by their social groups, helps rabbits to avoid predators. Eating poor quality, high fibre vegetation, and digging burrows for shelter are just two of the many ways rabbits’ physiology is adapted to their environment. 

Domestic rabbits have the same needs as their wild ancestors regarding their eating, sleeping, and toileting behaviours. Breeding may have altered some of their physical features, but their physiology has remained unchanged. Providing a suitable environment for our rabbits means ensuring that they can eat, sleep, and toilet in separate areas. Their diet should consist of at least 85% grass/hay, and we should provide plenty of opportunities for foraging to replicate the eating habits of their wild ancestors.

Dijon – probably a messier eater than his wild cousins!