Rabbits are very communicative with each other, and with humans too. It’s not quite the same kind of communication that we use, but if you spend plenty of time with your rabbit, you will be able to communicate in a rabbity way!
Rabbit Society
The starting point of understanding rabbit communication is understanding the way that rabbits see the world, both in the wild and in domestic situations.
Rabbit society is very structured, and in the wild, several rabbits live together with a distinct hierarchy. They look after each other, finding food together and warning each other of danger using their thumper foot. This also applies in the domestic situation, where you become part of the society and hierarchy.
The place a rabbit has in the society is partly determined by who grooms them and who they groom. The number one rabbit will expect to be groomed by the others, but may not do any grooming of the others him or herself. Rabbits’ understanding of hierarchy is different to humans – the rabbit at the top of the grooming hierarchy is (usually) happy to do what it’s told by you as long as it keeps its place in the grooming order of importance.
Communication & Body Language
Rabbits obviously don’t use a spoken language like we do, but they do use body language (we do this too, so it’s not too difficult to understand).
A lot of rabbit communication is done with grooming as well as head, ear and body movements. Lop rabbits don’t move their ears as much as rabbits that have ears that stick up, but all rabbits use some kind of signals to communicate.
Understanding Your Rabbit
The following pages describe several different things that rabbits generally do to communicate particular moods or interests, such as being happy, playful, angry, distressed and nosey (as all rabbits are).
Rabbits are all very individual personalities, and you will only get to understand your rabbit by spending lots of time with them, although the next few pages will give you a good starting point.
