8 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT THIS LITTLE MAMMAL CALLED RABBIT YOU NEVER KNEW

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Rabbits are very popular animals and almost all steemians if not all must at one time or the other seen a rabbit either as a pet in one's house, a rabbit farm or in the wild. Rabbits are small mammal in the family leporidae of the order lagomorpha, found in many parts of the world. According to research there are about 60 breeds of rabbit that exist around the world. While the male rabbit is called a buck, the female is called a doe and a young rabbit is called a kit.
These animals have long ears, short fluffy tails,strong large hind legs and two pairs of sharp incisors(front teeth) as well as 2 peg teeth at the back of the top incisors. The strong and powerful hind legs helps the rabbit make it's movement by hopping. Rabbits have different body colour and wide range when it comes to sizes. While the rabbits that lives in the wild have a life span of 3 to 4years, the domestic rabbits can live between 9 to 12years because they are properly cared for, fed and they are not exposed to natural predators like foxes, weasels and eagles on like the ones that live in the wild.

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Rabbits in the wild likes dry, well drained slopes, grassland, woodlands and dunes. They dig burrows and live inside and come out when they want to feed or socialize. Rabbits are vegetarians and the have a great ability to digest fibre. Their diet include grasses and leafy weeds.

SPECIAL FEATURES OF A RABBIT

• The first and the most outstanding features of a rabbit is that it can see what is happening behind it without turing it's head. This is so because the eyes of the rabbit is located on the side of it's head, the rabbit has a vision of almost 360-degree. The eyes of the rabbit are not designed only for food searching or to go about their day-to-day lives, but mainly for spotting predators. They have the capability to spot possible predators from side, front or behind them with the help of their vision of almost 360-degrees. This enables the rabbit to make a quick escape if it feels endangered. Also the rabbit with the help of it's vision can see above it's heads that means it can see predators like eagles above the sky.

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• Rabbits suffer heart attacks like humans: a rabbit can die of fright. Animals like cats, dogs and other predator's scare can lead the rabbit into having heart attacks and putting the rabbit into shock which can cause sudden death. This is one of the reasons why the rabbits that live in the wide have a shorter life span than the domestic ones. The ones that live in the wild are faced with constant fright by predators thereby leading to heart attacks and reducing it's life span.

• Rabbit's teeth grows continuously throughout their lives: rabbits have front teeth called incisors which have very sharp edges to tear through rough and strong vegetations they eat. The cheek teeth on the other hand helps them in chewing their food into smaller sizes to aid digestion. One thing about the rabbit teeth is that it never stops growing as far as the rabbit is alive, the teeth will keep growing but with constant chewing of natural vegetation, it's helps the rabbit wear down it's ever growing teeth.

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• Rabbits sleep during the day and with their eyes wide open: rabbits prefer to sleep during the day and go search for food at night and while sleeping the rabbits eyes are always wide open so it is difficult to tell when a rabbit is actually sleeping.

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• Rabbits have excellent memories and are also very intelligent animals: rabbits have very good memories, some domestic rabbits know their names and respond when called just like dogs. But on like dogs they are very timid animals so they might not display their intelligence around you unless you give the time and be patience. Most domestic rabbit know who their owners are by voice or smell.

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• Rabbits are very emotional animals: rabbits can actually feel happy, anger, love, jealousy, fear and insecurity.

• Rabbits are social animals: rabbits are very likable and social animals that loves to spend time with humans as in the case of the domestic ones and the ones that live in the wild most atimes lives in smaller communities that is made up of burrows called warrens. They equally have a way of communicating when they spot a predator and that is by freezing and loudly thumping the ground with their hind leg to alert the Warren of the dangers that lies ahead.

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• Rabbits have very large sensitive ears: the ears of the rabbits are very large and can turn to any direction. The rabbit have very acute sense of hearing and this provide the rabbit with maximum information about what is happening around it's environment as well as keep them on the alert about possible dangers of predators.

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