Rabbits are a small mammal that can be found in nearly every country around the world. There are eight different genera of rabbits, with the most widely spread being the European rabbit. All breeds, except cotton tail and hares, live underground in burrows. The European rabbit has been domesticated for use as both pets and food. In many countries, such as Australia, they are regarded as a pest and several programs have been developed to eradicate, or reduce the rabbit population.
The rabbit also has a place in culture and literature. The most obvious being the Easter Bunny followed by fictional characters such as Peter Rabbit, Bugs Bunny.
The diet of a rabbit consists of mainly grass, forbs (flowering herbal plant), leafy weeds and their own poop.
You didn’t read that wrong, rabbits eat poop. Specifically, rabbits eat their own poop. The reason rabbits eat their own poop is because of their diet. Their diet consists of a large amount of cellulose which is hard to digest. Unlike cows who also consume difficult to digest food and regurgitate it several times and then chew it to extract the nutrients, rabbits solve this problem in a far grosser way. What they do is pass two different types of faeces. They pass hard pellets and soft black viscous pellets. It is the soft pellets that they instantly eat. By doing this they are able to extract the nutrients from their food. This behaviour is known as coprophagy. If rabbits didn’t eat their own poop they would not survive.
