hello! so because i’ve never met a rabbit other than my own, i’m not certain how intelligent rabbits are. would anyone like to answer?

a bit of backstory. in june 2019 i discovered a black domestic rabbit in my yard. when i talked to my neighbor he said he had seen the rabbit running around earlier in the week. it was very hot, and i didn’t want to just leave the rabbit because i was afraid he might overheat or otherwise be in danger. so, i managed to bribe the rabbit. it took an hour or two but i caught him.

my parents told me that i was not to keep the rabbit -ha- so i tried contacting the owner. it was obvious the rabbit had had an owner previous; the rabbit was litter trained, was not shy around people -even strangers- and besides. i was able to bribe him and handle him. if he had not been handled previously, i don’t think i would have been able to do that. he’s very fast when he wants to be.

i tried contacting the owner for a month. i contacted the non-emergency police, all of the animal shelters in the area, the twilight bark on facebook for my state, all of the veterinary services in the area, and put up a flyer in the local pet store. despite a rumor on the twilight bark that someone had seen a man chasing a black rabbit not far from where i live, nothing came of it. a month passed and there was no contact from the previous owner. we took the rabbit to the vet to see if he was chipped; he was not, and so i got to keep him.

by that time the name “rabbit” had stuck- because my parents had told me not to name him, as i wasn’t going to keep him- ha. so he’s just the rabbit.

from the start the rabbit seemed very intelligent. i’m not certain if this is evidenced by data, but in my opinion, smarter animals have more distinct personalities. and the rabbit, from the start, had a very very strong personality. for example, i didn’t understand for two weeks that the reason he was stomping at me all the time was because 1. he wanted to free roam and 2. he wanted me to pet him more. he’s very opinionated lol.

i have had a variety of pets- a dog, lots of cats, lots of hamsters, some guinea pigs, some rats, and fish. i would put the rabbit on the same “scale” of intelligence as the cats and perhaps the dog, which is quite smart- and i would say that this particular rabbit is smarter than the two cats i have now.

i haven’t tried training him much because i have never trained an animal, though i plan to try at some point. but because i have not trained an animal i don’t know if his “trainability” can be used as a basis for estimating his intelligence.

he just seems very smart, almost startlingly so. are all rabbits like this? he’s very well-behaved from what i’ve read about rabbits. he has to be at least a year old, so he is past puberty; so his good behavior is not because he’s young. i would estimate -based on what the vet said- that he is 1.5 to 2 years old, though perhaps older. he’s not destructive, really; he destroys toys, but not the carpet nor the walls nor anything else that he isn’t meant to chew. he’s litter trained; i didn’t train him, so i have to assume he was taught by his previous owner or learned on his own. he doesn’t spray urine and he is non-aggressive, even about his home base. he doesn’t lunge and is not territorial despite being unneutered. he doesn’t like to be handled but he loves to be petted and interacted with. from what i’ve read, his behavior is strangely tame.

some examples of his intelligence are
1. we have “arguments” lol. he is obviously nonverbal, but we will “argue” with one another for minutes on end about whether he should be up on the bed. during these “arguments” he will pretend to go back to his home base; then the instant i look away or my back is turned, he will leap onto the bed.

2. he likes to be “argued” with. prior to the rabbit, i had never met an animal who liked to be told they weren’t supposed to do something. he seems to think it’s a challenge. he binkies and gets excited if i tell him “no”. despite him understanding what “no” means, he generally disregards it.

3. he memorizes routine. for example, every night at 8:30 i sit on the floor and read to him from a book. the instant i arrange myself on the floor he is by my side, lying down. my mom saw him do this, unprompted, and was surprised.

4. he has a strangely accurate sense of time. his story time is at 8:30. the rabbit -unerringly- seems to think his story time should be at 8:15. i don’t understand how he’s able to do this. i’ve had him long enough that he’s not telling time by the darkness of the hour; 8:15 during summer is much lighter than 8:15 during winter. he’s not telling time based on when i feed him, as it varies; i feed him his supper from 5:30 to 7:30, depending on the day. there is no specific activity that i’m doing prior to his story that might tell him that the story is next; i don’t really follow a strict daily schedule.

the only constant is that i have an alarm at 7:00 for my medication. but that’s a full hour and a half -or hour and fifteen minutes, based on the rabbit’s estimation- prior to his story.

5. he knows the order in which i clean his home base. the order is: pellets -which i supply to him to distract him while i’m cleaning lol- then litter box / spot cleaning, refill hay, put in greens, refill water. he always returns to home base to eat his greens as soon as i put them in. if he starts to return and sees that i’m “too early” in the order -that i’m cleaning the litter box, for instance- he will stop going home and go back to what he was doing until “later” in the order.

6. he seems to learn quickly, for the small amount of “training” i’ve managed. for instance, he used to jump in the litter box when i was cleaning it to use it when it was empty. i stopped him doing this once or twice, and he stopped doing it altogether. now if he approaches the litter box and sees that it is empty, he will not even jump in.

tldr; how smart are rabbits? are you surprised, all the time, by how intelligent your rabbits are?