Rabbit Enrichment: It’s More Than Toys
Let’s redefine rabbit enrichment. Beyond mere toys and activities meant to alleviate boredom, enrichment can serve as a comprehensive framework to ensure optimal welfare and well-being. Enrichment is essential for meeting rabbits’ needs and empowering them to engage in various natural behaviors in healthy, safe, and appropriate ways. In this blog post, I’ll explore how enrichment can enhance rabbits’ sense of security, promote rest and relaxation, and increase physical and mental exercise, among other benefits. Let’s dig in!
What is Enrichment?
“Enrichment” is a buzzword that everyone loves to throw around (including me), but the word is jam-packed with history, conceptual frameworks, and implementation options. Let’s delve in briefly.
The concept of enrichment for animals draws from the work of Hal Markowitz in the 70s, who was working in zoos to improve the animals’ health and welfare for conservation purposes. Markowitz said that enrichment’s goal is to create an environment “more like nature” that allows animals in captivity to behave as closely as possible to how they would in the wild. To enrich captive animals, you learn a particular species’s needs and then structure the environment to meet that animal’s needs as much as possible. It sounds simple, but it is not.
How do we bring Markowitz’s 'more like nature' model of zoo enrichment into our homes for companion rabbits? Allie Bender and Emily Strong offer an excellent framework that I'll draw from for this post. Spoiler alert: I'm obsessed with the enrichment approach outlined in their book Canine Enrichment for the Real World.
For Bender & Strong, enrichment means meeting an animal’s physical, mental, and emotional needs to empower them to perform species-typical behaviors in healthy, safe, and appropriate ways. In short, enrichment means meeting all of an individual animal’s needs. Let's take this apart, pull out the salient points, and apply them to the context of the pet rabbit.
What Rabbit Enrichment Looks Like
Enrichment focuses on your individual rabbit’s needs
Certain needs are common to all animals, but the specifics and nuances of these needs vary according to the species. All rabbits have similar needs, but the means for meeting them varies by individual and according to context. Needs change over the course of an individual's life as their environment changes and depending on their health status. The role of enrichment is to help meet your rabbit’s evolving needs.
Categories of Enrichment Needs:
Health & Veterinary Care (physical well-being)
Hygiene
Nutrition
Physical Exercise
Sensory Stimulation (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch)
Safety (physically being out of harm's way, regardless of how you feel about the situation)
Security (feeling like you are safe, regardless of whether or not you are. Prey species use behaviors like fleeing, hiding, and surveying the environment to meet this need.)
Species Typical Behaviors (for rabbits, think chewing, digging and hopping)
Foraging (searching for and finding food)
Social Interaction
Mental Stimulation
Relaxation and Rest
Independence
Environment (factors like temperature and light levels)
Enrichment Promotes Species-Typical Behaviors
Some of the rabbits’ species-typical behaviors include chewing, digging, periscoping, hopping, chinning, grooming, and binkying.
Why are species-typical behaviors so important? Because animals use these behaviors to meet their basic needs, and when they don’t live in an environment that provides opportunities to engage in these behaviors, their needs may go unmet. Once more, meeting a rabbit's needs also encourages a variety of species-typical behaviors.
For example, periscoping is a behavior that rabbits use to help meet their need for security because it allows them to survey their environment for potential danger. If they can’t survey their environment, they may not feel safe.
Rabbits’ grooming behaviors aren’t just a way they meet their hygienic needs; they are one way to soothe and calm themselves and recover from upsets. If an individual rabbit is limited in their ability to groom themselves or another rabbit, they may not have as many options to soothe themselves, and this can make it more difficult for them to meet their needs for rest.
Rabbit Enrichment Structures a Rabbit’s Environment to Support a Range of Natural Behaviors to Meet Their Needs.
When we understand the specific needs of an individual rabbit and the behaviors that help fulfill those needs, we can purposefully design an environment that encourages and supports these behaviors. In this section, I’ll elaborate on the enrichment framework by highlighting specific behaviors, the needs they may help fulfill, and some enrichment options to support the rabbits.
Rabbit behavior: Periscoping
Needs the behavior helps meet: Rabbits periscope to survey and investigate their environment. This behavior can help a rabbit meet their need for security (gotta make sure there’s nothing spooky over there), mental stimulation (is there something new over there? Let me check it out!), sensory stimulation, including sight and smell, and physical exercise.
If your rabbit is unable to periscope because of arthritis, you can still alter the environment to allow the rabbit to survey the environment from an elevated surface. Other enrichment options may include perches and ramps.
Pic of Stormy on my window sill with the caption, come rabbits like to perch on elevated surfaces to better survey and observe the world. This can help meet their need for security.
Rabbit behavior: Hopping
Hopping allows rabbits to navigate their environment, escape and hide from frightening or unpleasant things, explore their surroundings, and remain vigilant for potential threats. It enables them to access desired resources, receive mental and sensory stimulation, and move to warmer, cooler, darker, or lighter locations, depending on their preferences at any given moment. Of course, hopping also fulfills their need for physical exercise.
You can make changes to the environment to encourage more hopping: put down rugs of various textures and give rabbits multiple options for hiding places, foraging areas, resting and napping areas, and areas where they can monitor and observe the world around them. You’ll need to observe your rabbits to see how they use their space and their environmental preferences throughout the day.
Rabbit behavior: Digging
Rabbits are hardwired to dig. In natural settings, they spend a great deal of their time digging to build and maintain their underground warrens and forage for food. In our homes, digging can help meet a rabbit’s need for physical exercise - it is quite a workout! It also provides sensory stimulation and helps keep their nails short. Some rabbits also feel calmer and more relaxed after a good digging session.
Our human homes provide very little outlet or incentive for digging. Some enrichment options to encourage this behavior include snuffle mats or other textures where rabbits will dig to access food, boxes or tunnels filled with toilet paper tubes, or shredded paper that rabbits dig and pull out. Rabbits can also be trained to file their own nails by digging on an abrasive surface.
Rabbit Behavior: Binkying
Binkies are much more than an expression of joy or a form of play. Binkying helps rabbits calm themselves, reduce over-arousal levels, and recover from upsets in their environment. In cooler temperatures, binkies help a rabbit keep warm. Need for physical exercise. This behavior may look different for each rabbit. While some rabbits may have extended periods of jumping and twisting their bodies in the air, other rabbits may binkie in a subtler form of head flicks.
There are several ways to promote this behavior. Flooring is important. Generally, rabbits will not perform binkies on slick flooring. Try rugs that provide traction and a bit of bounce. Novel surfaces, or ones that a rabbit does not have consistent access to, such as couches, human beds, or new rugs, tend to elicit binkies, too. Rabbits are more likely to engage in this behavior around dawn and dusk, although many rabbits will burst into binks at various times throughout the night. Younger, more agile rabbits may require more space to get a running start.
Rabbit behavior: Chewing
Chewing helps meet rabbits’ nutritional needs and is necessary to wear down their continually growing teeth. Chewing allows rabbits to break down food into smaller pieces and is an important part of digestion, although not all chewing results in consumption. Rabbits can also grasp, gnaw on, and shred objects with their teeth.
Rabbits also chew as a form of mental and sensory stimulation, exploring their environment and interacting with objects and surfaces. Chewing is likely also a form of stress relief. In short, chewing is an important part of your rabbit’s enriched lifestyle!
The most important thing for your rabbits to chew is hay. Apart from that, you can provide a variety of items on rotation to see what your rabbits likes: loofa, cardboard of various weights and thicknesses, and safe tree branches. Rabbits often like to chew objects that are fixed down to provide resistance, so you can tie or weigh objects down or attach them to the bars of a pen. Digging, chewing, and foraging tend to occur together, so promoting those behaviors will likely increase chewing behavior, too.
Rabbit behaviors: Sleeping and Resting
These behaviors are essential for physical health, aiding in recovery from illness or injury, and supporting emotional well-being. The need for rest, relaxation, and deep sleep is closely tied to feelings of security and comfort. Meeting these needs typically increases sleeping and resting behaviors. In natural settings, rabbits spend the daylight hours resting and sleeping in underground warrens, where it is dark and cool. Our rabbits have evolved physically and behaviorally to thrive under similar conditions. The conditions in our human homes are not generally favorable for rabbits in this regard, and this is one area where enrichment may have big payoffs in terms of overall health and well-being.
To support good sleep and rest, provide rabbits with multiple resting locations available throughout the day, offering a variety of surface textures, ambient temperatures, and light levels. Notice how your rabbits' preferences shift throughout the day and respect their midday siestas. In warmer weather, pay extra attention, as many rabbits prefer cooler environments for relaxation. Consider using frozen water bottles and ceramic tiles. Older rabbits or those with arthritis may benefit from access to warmer areas, such as a cozy hiding spot with soft fleece and a low-setting heating device.
Feelings of comfort are intertwined with feelings of security, and both are needed for relaxation and restorative sleep. Give them the option to escape bright light during the day by providing access to darker locations. Often, living with a companion allows rabbits to rest more fully, as one rabbit takes over security duties. When managing pain, pay special attention to your rabbit’s resting behavior. Rabbits in pain can’t fully relax and rest, feel comfortable or secure.
Latrice Royale relaxing after chewing a hole in a storage box. Photo by Thea Harting
Rabbit behavior: Foraging
All animals engage in foraging behaviors to search for and obtain food. Cats hunt, dogs scavenge, and humans go grocery shopping. Rabbits, on the other hand, browse for food. This involves selecting parts of a plant depending on their nutritional needs and preferences. Rabbits tend to like the youngest and tenderest parts of plants, such as the leaves, buds, shoots, twigs, and even bark. In natural settings, they graze through grasses and may reach up high on their back legs to grab the juiciest berry or use their front legs and teeth to scratch up plant roots.
Foraging is an active behavior, both mentally and physically, and requires exploration and choice. When rabbits browse, they move through their environment, making choices and exercising preferences. Rabbits will nibble a little of this, a little of that, and then move on in hopes of finding something better, and then return to the same spot to continue eating. Rabbits eat small portions throughout the day, sampling at their leisure.
Foraging involves multiple body parts and all sensory systems. Rabbits use their whiskers, lips, tongue, and incisors to forage, and even their noses to nudge some objects out of the way to get to the good stuff.
The need for rabbits to engage in foraging behaviors is closely tied to their sense of security. In the wild, rabbits multitask while foraging, constantly monitoring their surroundings for potential threats. When predators are nearby, rabbits reduce the time spent eating and foraging. They are more likely to spend time feeding if they have nearby locations where they can flee if needed.
When considering foraging enrichment, it's not about adding extra work for rabbits or alleviating boredom but rather about increasing a variety of species-typical behaviors such as digging, peeling, scraping, chewing, nudging, and pulling. Focus not only on what you feed your rabbits to meet their nutritional requirements but also on how you feed them.
Structure their environment to promote foraging and browsing behaviors by giving them multiple choices. Put hay in multiple locations to encourage rabbits to hop and explore their environment. Place a deep layer of hay in a large litter box and in a rack where they can reach up and pull. You can add foraging mix, herbs, or pellets over their litter box to encourage digging and sensory stimulation. Explore your rabbits' preferences by mixing various types and cuts of hays. Scatter pellets instead of serving them in a bowl. Serve greens from elevated positions, such as wedged between bars of a pen, to encourage rabbits to reach up and stretch. Try putting greens or other foods inside paper bags to encourage the rabbit to dig, peel, and chew. Drizzle pellets, foraging mix, dandelion, or burdock roots over snuffle mats, and occasionally move that mat to other places around your home. Foraging possibilities are endless and meet multiple needs. Go wild!
Evidence of burrowing and foraging in a large rabbit litter box with a deep layer of hay.
Providing enrichment isn’t so much about giving rabbits toys or activities but empowering them with opportunities and the ability to perform species-typical behaviors in a way that helps meet their needs. At the same time, meeting a rabbit's physical and emotional needs helps promote a variety of species-typical behaviors. Every rabbit is an individual, and enrichment is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor.
Sources and Recommendations for Further Exploration:
If you want to jumpstart your enrichment journey, start with the Enrichment for the Real World Podcast. It is multispecies and has some of the best rabbit enrichment content I’ve seen. Start with the first episode. You can also read the transcripts of every episode.
Read the book Canine Enrichment for the Real World to dive deeper into enrichment. Yes, the book has “canine” in the title, but there’s lots of stuff for rabbit folks in there, too.
Anything by Guen Bradbury. Many of her webinars are available here.
If documentaries are more your game, you can learn about rabbit behavior in natural settings in the BBC series The Burrowers: Animals Underground. You can watch full episodes on YouTube.