Rabbit Biting and Growling

[Emma Divine]

Hi!!!!

I adopted a two year old rabbit from a friend-of-a-friend in July of this year. I had her spayed about a week after I adopted her. Pre-spayed she was fairly aggressive (although I think that it was hormonal/fear-based since she was unspayed and in a new environment) but has since calmed down considerably. She has free-reign of my fairly large bedroom, since it isn’t possible to bunny-proof my whole apartment. She is usually pretty friendly…she comes over to say ‘hi’ when I come into the room, will flop over to sleep while I’m sitting nearby, is happy to get pets (especially cheek scritches), runs around and binkies sometimes, and even hops up and hangs out on my bed at night. 

However, sometimes when I’m walking around my room (mostly in the morning) she will run ahead of me or charge after me and growl… She also has a habit of randomly biting my forearms (this doesn’t happen very often and I can’t seem to find a trigger, other than maybe something about the sweater or shirt I’m wearing on a particular day freaks her out?). I’m not really sure what is causing this or what to do other than maybe try hand-feeding her some pellets every day so that she has a more positive association with hands/arms (I tried this today and she was very polite and didn’t even nip me accidentally).

 I hope that the aggression isn’t pain-based…the vet did an overall checkup before the spay, so I assume they would have seen if anything was wrong. 

(Alternately, I try to provide her with lots of toys and cardboard boxes to dig and chew on but maybe she’s just bored and taking it out on me?)

Any advice would be much appreciated!!!

Emma

[Flopsie]

It’s hard to say unless you have a better picture of what happens before the behavior (antecedent) and after the behavior or your response (consequences)

Have you noticed any patterns ? What do you do in response?

[Emma Divine]

I haven’t really noticed a particular pattern which is part of why I’m not sure what to do about it…Like sometimes when my arm is within biting range she’s totally chill and other times she’ll bite. And I thought that maybe the movement of my pants was bothering her, but she still did the running/growling thing when I had shorts on. When she bites me I usually move my hand/arm away and make a high-pitched ‘ouch’ or ‘eek’ because I’ve read that that noise lets bunnies know that it hurts when they bite. I usually just ignore her or give her a lil forehead rub when she does the running/growling thing.

[Emma Divine]

Quick addition: I have noticed that the aggression will usually increase when I’ve been gone for a while- like if I have a particularly long day of classes she will exhibit more aggressive behavior when I get back at the end of the day than if I had been in my room all day in which case she might exhibit little to no aggressive behavior at all.

[litheandgraphic]

The aggression based on you not being there could be pegged to a couple of things; she might be holding a “grudge” against you for being out too long. If she runs low on food (hay) by the time you get back this could also factor in, maybe…

Rabbits are very particular animals with a highly intricate bunny language that is often difficult for us humans or any other species to understand. She may be trying to tell you something that you can’t see, and gets angry at you for not paying attention/noticing.

In addition to the squeal, you might try moving away from her when she does this to let her know you don’t accept that behavior.

Ultimately, though, I think your best potential solution is to get her a mate, so that she has someone to “talk” to, be with all day long, etc. She may be getting bored and lonely and she may need a bunny companion.

[Emma Divine]

Yeah, I think another bunny would definitely help the situation. I’m graduating college in May, so I’m not sure that I’ll have time to supervise/troubleshoot any bunny bonding until the summer, but Echo could definitely use a furry friend.

[JackRabbit]

If you’re considering getting her a friend next year, have you thought about getting her a surrogate in the mean time? The BB store has a couple of perfect bunny stuffed animals and some single buns take to them nicely. Kieko bonded with her stuffie and grooms him (she still occasionally tries to get him to groom her back).

[Emma Divine]

I thought about it, but she doesn’t have the best track record with things made out of fabric… she tends to attack them (although she does groom one of my fluffy pillows). 😛

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