One of the finest....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdOJnpTWU_w&feature=related

One of the new varieties

I have been accused...

...of having a scientific interest in rabbit behavior. Everybody wants to know what I am doing having rabbits---"I mean, is it a business?" It could be If you looked at it that way, but the return profit margin is pretty pathetic as in non-existent. Yep, it could be looked at as a business. I mean why am I doing this? Here comes the myth, here comes the fiction: I am doing it because...I am an amateur naturalist, because I am a rabbit breeder, because I really, really like rabbits---you see what I mean? There are all of these possible layers of interpretation but in fact what I am doing when I am really doing what it is that I love to be doing, is to purely "observe' rabbit behavior. Next we look at rabbit behavior.

Rabbit Behavior 101
Granted everything I say here is speculative for the same reason as above...When I catch myself drifting into narrative mythification as I observe rabbit behavior, catching myself at that moment starting to tell as story or "understand" the rabbit behavior. After all I am a mammal. Yes, some of my "interpretations" concerning rabbit behavior may be 'incorrect'---but maternal behavior is fairly specific to mammals---feeding/milking, nestbuilding, affection, territorial boundaries, participation in the larger 'tribe'. For example, aunts will readily befriend kits where they would fight for the same territory with peers. This I have observed many, many times. The bucks are another story!

An Amateur Naturalist Takes a Look at Rabbit Behavior

I must confess from the absolute getgo that rabbit behavior is the most satisfying discovery that I have made in this life. For example, I just witnessed a fascinating exchange between a dwarf named 'Sox; and the whole female herd (Tabitha (matriarch) Vincent (senior doe), Munchie (adolescent doe), not to mention Timber's six kittens who I have not yet named. My idea was to find out if Sox could socialize with these Lops (other species---no, not species, but variety). The answer became clear almost at once: 'definitely not!'The Lops were up for it, but poor little Sox went ballistic. Sure, I wanted to jump in there and interpret what was going on: like, "...she ('Sox') feels superior to the other rabbits, she has lived alone for a long time, and let's not forget she had just lost the love of her life, Mister Magnus (in photo aboove:Sox, black and Mr. Magnus, white)."
Every word of it---truth. Every word of it---fiction. My way of observing rabbits is to stay with the pure behavioral observations as much as possible without me throwing in all of the human elements and then if I catch myself mythifying or even attempting to "understand" the rabbit behavior I back off, or try to stop the thought right there at its root.


Call it a phenomenology of the rabbit, if you will, on the one hand; and on the other it is a fictive novel. At the same time it is a kind of window through which I am able to 'interpret' my own existence.