All miscellaneous rabbit info and facts are on this page!

Rabbit Sleep and Activity Cycles

Rabbits sleep between 7-12 hours a day via short periods of sleep throughout the day. An average of 11.4 hours total spent in sleep is made up of about two-thirds deep sleep (7-8 hours) and one-third (1-2 hours) light sleep. Rabbits sleep during the day and at night, and they tend to be most active at dawn and dusk. This type of activity cycle is called being "crepuscular", whereas humans are primarily "diurnal" (awake during the day and sleep at night).

Rabbit Senses

Hearing
Rabbits have sensitive ears which can hear frequencies between 96Hz to 49,000Hz (1), compared to humans, which can hear between 12Hz and 20,000Hz. This means we can hear sounds lower in pitch than rabbits can, but they can hear sounds much higher in pitch. Their best hearing is between the range of 1,000 to 16,000 Hz. Rabbits are able to move each ear independently, allowing them to better pinpoint where a sound is coming from. Think of it like binocular hearing!

 

Sight
Rabbits can see nearly 360 degrees around them, but they are farsighted with grainy vision. They have little overlap in the middle of their vision, due to their primarily  monocular vision, compared to our binocular vision. This means they have a small blind spot toward the front of their face, and they do not have the same level of depth-perception as do humans. Rabbits have to move their heads around and rely on their other senses more to judge distances and sizes of objects. Rabbit eyes have a nictitating membrane (a clear 'eyelid') which can act to prevent debris from getting into their eyes without fully closing them, so they can still detect movement and potential threats. Rabbits are able to see in the dim light (night vision) due to sensitive rod cells, but they cannot see in complete darkness and instead rely on their other senses. Unlike cats, they do not have the light-reflective tapetum lucidum at the back of their retina to allow them to utilize every bit of light, so their night vision is not as good as cats. Rabbits are red-green colorblind, meaning they cannot tell hues of red from green or blue from green. While their close vision is not great, they do have good distance vision, allowing them to spot threats from far away.

 

Smell

Rabbits have an excellent sense of smell. Rabbits have 100 million olfactory receptors in their noses, compared to 6 million in human noses. With a sense of smell about 20 times better than ours, they are capable of detecting threats, food, and friends from up to 2 miles away. Rabbits are also able move inhaled and exhaled air separately, allowing them to smell continuously rather than having to specifically inhale to smell.

 

Whiskers

Rabbit whiskers, like cat whiskers, are very sensitive to touch. They help make up for a rabbit's poor depth-perception, feel vibrations in the ground and movement in the air, and judge width of their burrows or escape routes.

Percentage Composition of the Rabbit Body

Percentage Composition of Rabbit Milk

Rabbit milk is very high in fat and nutrients, allowing them to only nurse their babies  once or twice a day.

Digestibility of Alfalfa Hay by Rabbits