My bunny bit me hard whilst playing together

[narkut]

Hi,

My bunny Duke is 5 months old and he was neutered 2 months ago. Since being neutered his personality has changed a bit. He used to be very calm, loving and happy. He now thumps (when I take too long to feed him) and he doesn’t want to be touched. I know he trusts me though because he always runs up to me, jumps on and off my lap and happily eats out of my hand. I’m assuming the personality change may be because he is entering adolescence?

Last night, he was sitting on my lap playing with me. I put a toy in front of him, he grabs it with his teeth, shakes it about and throws it off my lap. He could play this game for ages! All seemed well until he bit my arm really hard, leaving marks! I screeched and put him on the floor. He went about his business and came back a little while later to play again.

I can’t work out whether he was being aggressive with me? Was he telling me that it’s not a game and in fact he hates it? Or was that his way of saying he wants to stop playing? Or do rabbits sometimes bite when they’re having fun? Has anyone seen this behaviour before? I’m so confused! I don’t want to anger or upset him and I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again as it really hurt!

Any help or ideas would be much appreciated!

[jerseygirl]

Was your arm directly in front of his face when he bit you?

[narkut]

No not at all. My arm was resting to the side of me, completely out of the way.

[jerseygirl]

Rabbits do nip sometimes to communicate (with us or another rabbit) but it sounds as if he did this a bit too hard! Hopefully you letting out a screech when he did it told him this. If he were to bite another rabbit, they’d have some fur protecting them. Our bare arm is a bit more vulnerable.

I couldn’t tell you the reason why he did it. You’d have to watch his behaviour for a while to figure it out. Even though he is neutered, rabbits still go through an adolensce so it could be partly due to that. Most times when a rabbit bites, it’s related to fear or a learnt behaviour. But with your rabbit, since he likes to play and seems to trust you, I have to wonder if it was meant to be a nip. Either to tell you “keep playing” or “give me attention”.

[narkut]

I have stopped playing that game, just in case he was trying to tell me he’s bored of it. There has been no other change since, he’s acting completely normal. I guess I’ll never know why and just hope it doesn’t happen again.
Thank you!

[Author]

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