The Secret Voice of Rabbits

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Nightmares and Parrot Wannabe's

Late, Like a White Rabbit

Hello again bunny peeps! It's me, RP, RabbitPhotog, and sorry for being so slow to get back to this series; The Secret Voice of Rabbits. I was getting ready to write this post right before Halloween but got delayed. So the day after Halloween, or rather on November 2, the Day of the Dead, or All Soul's Day, I had an eerie reminder to do it.

You see here at our little bunny photography studio, MagicMan (my photography assistant, rabbit handler, keeper, and spousal unit) and I noticed a long time ago that bunny rabbits love  movies. Oh, they love some TV shows, too, but mostly they love movies. They like the kind of movies in which the people talk to each other a lot. Not argumentative characters arguing a lot (although when done just so by top Hollywood talent, they do seem to love a good argument) but characters just having good, genuine conversations. One example is Miss Potter! But you know, we'll come back to that as I just know my esteemed bunny social critic, Thumper S. Thompson will want to weigh on that and he'd be upset with me for blazing any trails on that topic. So look for that down the road, folks.

A scene from "Miss Potter," (left) and Beatrix Potter's original pencil drawing from which this scene is taken.

So we have TV's with DVD players spread about the place so the bunnies can view some great entertainment. Mostly, it's horse movies like Seabiscuit, Secretariat, and War Horse, and literally a dozen others (after all, TST says horses are just really big bunnies!). But, as usual, I digress. The point in mentioning this was that on Halloween night, we watched a good Halloween movie, Fright Night. MagicMan likes it because he's a huge Dr. Who fan. Along with Colin Farrell, Fright Night stars David Tennant, who, MagicMan says played the best Dr. Who. I have to agree as I think he's probably the best actor to yet play that part.

 

The Scream

During Fright Night, as in any vampire movie, there's lots of screaming by the women victims. And then the night after watching it, we woke up in terror when we heard one if these screams right next to us! Imagine, we woke to hear a rabbit screaming! Rabbits only ever scream when they think their life is in danger, what was going on! I could tell it was coming from MagicMan's favorite little kooky, goofball buddy rabbit, Magic (yes, MagicMan's favorite bunny's name is Magic, coinkydink?). Was he having a nightmare? Did the movie we'd just watched the night before give him nightmares? We would never want him to watch anything that gave him nightmares!

No, Magic wasn't having a nightmare. He was wide awake when he let out his scream, although it wasn't a really loud one, a rabbit scream is truly loud and this was not. It was...almost like a mimic of a scream, a taunting type of sound. In his younger years, when he first came to us, this quirky little albino bunny did used to have nightmares and he did used to sometimes wake up screaming from those nightmares which, you can imagine, scared the bejesus out of us. So why was he taunting us and purposely scaring us?

A Rabbit Parody of Edvard Munch's The Scream

Magic had come from a very scary situation where someone had over 100 rabbits running around a small, suburban home breeding out of control. Almost all the rabbits taken from that situation were albino and the rest solid black as this is what happens with severe inbreeding. Many had parts of their ears missing as well, but for the most part, they were all in good health, probably because they were still pretty young. 

So here Magic came. He no longer had to fight over food with other rabbits, no longer had to fight over territory or anything. He has his own spacious custom-designed domain and a human who dotes on him like the way Tom Waits' character in Seven Psychopaths dotes on his albino rabbit. His nightmares lingered for a while after first coming here but then as he acclimated to the sound of several large parrots in the next room, the nightmares went away.

MagicMan and MagicRabbit cuddle on the bed.
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In becoming part of a family of avid movie fans, he, along with the other bunnies, watched lots of movies and TV shows and was carefully desensitized to them. Part of my background as an animal photographer includes an advanced understanding of operant conditioning, i.e., animal behavior, so the bunnies were carefully desensitized to scary movies over time. Movies like The Lord of the Rings trilogy with the Orcs, Uruk Hai, and whatnot, were part of that program. This went beautifully and many hilarious stories arose from the experience. 

Of Mimicry and Puppetry

All the bunnies became quickly aware that there is a very real thing such as talking animals. Not only that, but the ones who talk, do so very loudly. And if you think parrots don't know what they're talking about, then I suggest you read up on Alex the African Grey and free your mind, man (as TST would say). Don't think that your bunnies don't know what's going on either. Just last year, the top minds in science declared that animals are as aware as humans. With that comes a certain species jealousy which develops when an animal is first confronted with an intelligent, vocal parrot. When one of my parents' dogs first met my then young Amazon parrot, and was greeted with a hearty "Hello!", the dog, a highly intelligent poodle, looked shocked, ran off and sat in the corner facing the wall like he would do whenever he was being ridiculed. I felt sorry for the little fellow as I could sense his embarrassment and shame for not having a mouth which could easily speak words. But there are dogs that talk, too, and quite well. Like Mischka, the husky. Maybe you've even seen Mischka in one of her TV commercials for a bank!

The bunnies are no different. They listen and absorb what's going on around them and try to tell us things. Little Magic bunny has told us a couple of times now that he does have a pretty good sense of humor, and that he is completely desensitized to scary movies but that he also knows we are not desensitized to scary bunnies! So he will, very seldom, scare the pantaloons off of us with a fake scare by mimicking a scream now and then. We've noticed it's usually a day or two after we watch a scary movie (as we are not in the habit of watching this genre) but then, again, maybe he's being a movie critic, of sorts, in doing this. Or maybe he just gets a big kick out of scaring us! We know he has a great sense of humor, as many rabbits do, because of the way he uses his ceramic pellet and water crocks to imitate our Tibetan Singing Bowls alarm clock if we haven't set it. Yea, and he knows exactly when it would have gone off if, indeed, it had been set. I digress again! The point is, Magic Rabbit is a pretty magical guy with a wicked sense of humor. ¹

The point is, rabbits scream. But they may not just scream when they think they're about to be killed. Sometimes, if they feel very secure in their environment, and if it's a very stimulating environment in which they must really exude their personality to compete with showy and show off parrots, they may scream just to have fun watching your reaction. Or, maybe it's to get even with those loud birds. Maybe. The birds all love the bunnies, and the largest of our parrots even used to have a bunny as a pet. The bunny would sleep every night in the bottom of the parrot's cage and the parrot would very carefully do his business in a far corner of the cage. He would toss her some of his pellets, too.

But that's another story for another day. In my next post in this series, The Secret Voice of Rabbits, I'll talk about just one of the secret things you can tell your rabbit to help the both of you make a much better bunny photo. And I still haven't even gotten to the part about their secret voices! All in good time. Meanwhile, I'm pretty busy bonding some bunnies right now so I know Thumper S. Thompson will step in here to pinch hit for me with another post soon.

Until then, tread lightly!

-RP


¹ "Anthropomorphism is a theory which presupposes its own validity." -Dr. Donald R. Griffin, Animal Minds

 -RabbitPhotog

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The Truth About Vitamin D

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Is it the answer to rabbit dental disease?

Frances Harcourt-Brown publishes a new paper on acquired dental disease in house rabbits

Frances Harcourt-Brown is considered by many to be the world's leading rabbit researcher. She is the author of the seminal Textbook of Rabbit Medicine. Although there are many wonderful rabbit medicine practitioners and researchers in this and other countries, Harcourt-Brown, a 1973 graduate of Liverpool University, is generally considered at the forefront of rabbit medicine for a couple of reasons. One reason is that she has espoused rabbit medicine enthusiastically and her practice in the UK is approximately 85% rabbits whereas here in the US, there probably aren't any practices having as high a rate as that of rabbits being seen. The vets that BES bunnies most often go to, SEAVS, is about 65% rabbits and that's the highest we've heard of in this country. Arguably also, there is a higher concentration of rabbit owners per capita in the UK than the US.

That might be because rabbits are a native species in the UK and are not in the US - there are no American rabbits (well, except for the highly endangered tiny pygmy rabbit), there are only hares (cottontails) in the US. So Harcourt-Brown also has access to a large population of wild rabbits to study.

Harcourt-Brown is particularly interested in rabbit dentistry although she has published many peer-reviewed scientific articles on rabbit medicine. The latest of her works is titled, The Progressive Syndrome of Acquired Dental Disease in Rabbits. and was published in the July 2007 Journal of Exotic Pet Medicine. Intriguing article title, isn't it? We thought so, so I bought it and now I can relay to you the most important parts of the article for rabbit owners.

For the past year or so, Vitamin D has enjoyed a lot of publicity. If you're like me and stay on top of medical and health news, you've heard a lot of hub-bub about Vitamin D. Certain media outlets, like Life Extension Foundation, are usually years ahead of the rest of the media in reporting on what will soon be hot topics. That's where we read about the Vitamin D 'epidemic' four years ago and have watched with interest as medical media and general media outlets around the country have finally caught up. Not only are people not getting enough Vitamin D, but neither are house rabbits! And, according to Harcourt-Brown and other rabbit researchers, that could be a key cause of rabbit dental disease.

My first rabbit, Darth, didn't wake up from his last molar trim. He was an 11 year old little 2 lb. Netherlands dwarf, a darling little fellow much like Spike. His teeth were particularly bad. His trim frequency had gone from every two months to every two weeks. I ended up driving all over Kingdom Come trying to find the best price on his trims. I ended back at the place where I started though with his final trim because all that driving was wearing us both down. For his last trim, he was dehydrated from drooling with pain and he didn't wake up. We were very sad but we also couldn't afford that anymore. Still, he lived a long, dignified life. Really, we should have thrown in the towel earlier, but it is very hard to know when it's time to do that.

Not all rabbit dental disease is this bad. But what happens is, your rabbit's molars, which are supposed to have a flat surface, grow pointy and sharp and pierce the tongue, or roof and/or sides of the mouth causing pain and infection. And they can't eat. The vet puts him under anaesthesia and trims the points down with a Dremel-like tool.

Harcourt-Brown's new article discusses not only appropriate treatment, which has changed in the past several years, but also things like exposure to sunlight, the lack of which may be a key cause of this syndrome.

LET THE SUNSHINE IN

Many people don't understand what Vitamin D and sunshine have to do with rabbit's teeth. Good question! Sunlight or sunshine allows your body to synthesize, or build, Vitamin D. Vitamin D allows your rabbit's body to metabolize, or utilize, calcium. Calcium is needed by the teeth and bones. In rabbits, teeth grow perpetually, so they need to be able to effectively metabolize calcium all their life. Yes, you can get Vitamin D from other sources than sunlight, like fish and algae, and a few other plant sources [editor's note: supplementing Vitamin D in the diet is dangerous and can be toxic if not supervised by a medical professional, sunlight or artificial lighting simulating sunlight cannot be toxic as the body simply stops synthesizing Vitamin D from these sources when sufficient levels are reached]. But those sources got their Vitamin D by synthesizing it from the UV in sunlight. And not just any sunlight, it has to be a certain wave-length of sunlight which is most accessible around high noon.

I talked to a few vets about Vitamin D lately and its possible relation to this rabbit dental problem. They had varying opinions on whether increased sunlight exposure would be useful, but that's all they were, opinions. It is not really known right now just how this would affect the new syndrome Harcourt-Brown describes in her paper. But she does make some interesting conclusions. "Most pet rabbits are housed indoors or in hutches and are proteccted from sunlight, so they are unable to synthesize Vitamin D," she says. If that is so, then a little sunlight could go a long way toward helping ease not only dental issues, but bladder sludge, bladder stones, and the like. Leading US rabbit advocate (and Chapter Manager of the Florida House Rabbit Society) Dana Krempels, PhD, seems to agree about the sunlight factor and dental disease (see link for comment).

Let the Sunlight Pour Down

It should be noted though that the sunlight must fall directly on the animal. Sunlight coming through a glass window has the UV filtered out by the glass and is of no use in the context we are discussing here. For people who keep parrots and reptiles, we have long known that this a vital part of those animals' living requirements. Parrot people who live in climates where it is too cold most of the year to take their birds outside, purchase special full spectrum lights which simulate the sunlight spectrum and these have been proven to be beneficial to the birds, and people as well (who suffer from SAD). There is no possibility of a toxic amount of of this light as the body simply stops synthesizing Vitamin D once it has enough. And, your body (and also your rabbit's) can store Vitamin D for later use. So if a rabbit's required 'photoperiod' is 5 minutes a day, and he gets 35 minutes of noonday sun in one day, that's enough for that week.

There are risks, though, in taking your rabbit outside. Predators, escape, pathogens, pesticides, and other dangers lurk about. If you do take your rabbits outside regularly to munch on some grass in the noonday sun, be sure that the grass is pesticide-free and that it's a dry day. More humid days make for more pathogens swimming about in the air and on the ground. Harcourt-Brown also says, "Significantly higher PTH and lower blood calcium levels have been found in rabbits without dental disease and living outside in natural conditions." Finally, an interesting note Harcourt-Brown makes, "Despite its prevalence in the pet rabbit population, PSADD is not documented in laboratory rabbits, even though the majority of these animals are not provided with twigs, grass, hay, or any other abrasive diet."

In Conclusion

She goes on to include, "Similar (dental) radiological changes to those that occur in rabbits with PSADD have been recorded in the incisors of genetically obese laboratory mice. In the mouse study, restricting the food intake prevented the (dental) changes taking place, which is the opposite expected result if the dental pathology was due to insufficient chewing." These two observations, that lab rabbits do not develop PSADD, and that elimination of obesity in lab mice eliminates PSADD in mice, are packed with potentialities. And more research I'm sure will be done on these two topics by Harcourt-Brown.

In the meantime, it is certainly a good idea to look into making sure your rabbit gets their true 'photoperiod' each day, or the amount of time required by a certain animal to obtain their needed amount of sunlight. And also to keep them slim and trim. An aside, cats are the only animals that, other than invertebrates who manufacture their own Vitamin D, do not require sunlight in order to synthesize the Vitamin D hormone.

One final note on this article by Harcourt-Brown, she clearly opines that doing a minimal trim on maloccluded teeth is preferable over the now 'old school' approach, which is to trim them down to the base of the gum line. Doing this, she notes, only causes the tooth to grow back faster and more deformed and destroys enamel of which rabbits have a finite amount during their lifetimes. This would be a good thing to discuss with your vet if your rabbit is going in for regular trims. I personally, will request this in the future, although it won't be necessary really since this is already how my vets are doing it. But I will still double check just to be sure.

 -Thumper S. Thompson

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