Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
rabbits are roughly the size and shape of loaves of bread, if loaves of bread had nervous eyes and adorable ears:
whereas hares and jackrabbits are the size of a jack russell terrier and look like they’ve just had a really difficult conversation with their manager:
An excellent Twitter account called “The Past is a Foreign Pantry” posted these amazing cookies/biscuits today, just in time for Easter. The author/chef also has a detailed blog post about Medieval hares and rabbits and pictures of the cookies and even references The Peasant’s Revolt. Go read it!
I think this is necessary to post. I see a lot of people “saving” bunnies.
“*Bunnies are one of the most frequently “kidnapped” mammal species. *Mothers dig a very shallow nest in the ground that is easily uncovered when mowing or raking the yard. If you find a rabbit nest-leave it alone!! *Mother rabbits only return to the nest two or three times a day, usually before dawn and right after dusk. *To determine if they are orphaned, either place a string across the nest in a tic-tac-toe shape or circle the nest with flour. Check the nest the next day. If the string or flour is disturbed, the mother has returned. If not, take the bunnies to a rehabilitator. * A bunny that is bright eyed and 4-5 inches long is fully independent and does NOT need to be rescued! *If you find a bunny that does need to be rescued, put it in a dark, quiet location. Bunnies are a prey species and while they may look calm, they are actually very, very scared!”
Easter is coming up! And it’s a terrible time for pet store bunnies!
Rabbits are marketed as “easy”, short-lived, starter pets, especially during the Easter holidays, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth! A healthy, well cared for bunny can live just as long as the average cat or dog- 10-12 years!
What’s more, they have more complex needs than a cat or a dog. Rabbits are prey animals and do not behave or show affection in the same way as predators like cats and dogs; they don’t deal well with being outside-only animals; they can get sad if they’re on their own and don’t receive enough attention; and if they’re bought as a male and female couple, they can start reproducing from as early as 5-6 months of age, and they can carry multiple litters at the same time!
They have a specialised diet (NOT carrots!), need a specialised living area (unless you want all your things to get chewed up!), and they need specialised vets! Caring for them costs as much as caring for a dog!
Boost this mates, it’s irresponsible to waste a good animal.
We need pet licenses
Bringing home a pet means assuming the responsibility for a living creature’s life, providing food, shelter, safety, exercise, affection, medical care, throughout all the stages of the animal’s life. If you want something cute, buy a stuffed animal. But if you want to model and teach caregiving, empathy, reliability, trustworthiness, the interconnectedness of life, and the importance of fulfilling obligations, then *perhaps* you should consider adopting a pet from a shelter. Unfortunately, there are lots of shelters with rabbits who stopped being cute and who became too much trouble for the people who brought them home to keep.
It may seem ‘‘relaxed’‘ or ‘‘sleeping’‘, but this is incredibly unhealthy.
They are
in a state of tonic immobility and are not relaxed, hypnotized, or insensitive to pain.
Scientists believe that this is a defense mechanism brought on when a
rabbit has already been ‘caught’ by a predator. If the rabbit appears
dead, the predator may release its grip momentarily and allows the
rabbit to escape. Research has shown that rabbits in this state show an
increased heart and respiratory rate with elevated plasma corticosterone
levels, indicative of fear-induced stress.
The stress caused by this position can be fatal if rabbits are already
suffering from respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and the sudden
transition to from passive and active escape can be unpredictable and
instantaneous which can result in significant injury to the rabbit. Sudden noise or painful stimuli can interrupt the trance and there is
considerable variation in individual susceptibility to the technique
Your rabbit will display the following behaviors if it is tranced:
Closed eyes
Shallow fast breathing
Relaxed limbs
It’s honestly sickening to see people buying bunnies for their cuteness and softness, but not educating themselves on how to actually take care of it. If you keep trancing your bunny on purpose or bathing it, you deserve to have your pets taken away from you.
Reblogging because Easter is coming and there are always people who blindly buy a bunny for their kids on Easter without educating themselves on how to take care of it. This is just another example on what NOT to do.
Same thing with chickens. It’s not cute. they aren’t relaxed. Stop doing this to rabbits and chickens.
The small Japanese island of
Okunoshima used to be a chemical
warfare testing site, but has since
been taken over by hundreds of
super-friendly rabbits. SourceSource 2Source 3
Tourists flock to Japan’s Rabbit Island just to be attacked by dozens of bouncing bunnies.
Visitors are mobbed the moment they reach into a bag or rustle anything that sounds like paper.
Officials have banned cats and dogs from the island to keep the rabbits safe.
Many rabbits were use as test subjects when the island it was a chemical warfare testing ground, but it is expected that all of them were killed when the factory was demolished - so no one really knows where all these rabbits came from.
There’s a rumor that a teacher once brought some rabbits to the island for school children to play with, and they then multiplied like, well, bunnies.
Though nobody knows for sure, the tourists don’t seem to care. And the rabbits are totally cool with it. Obvi.
