9 Show Jumping

Is it a rabbit, or is it a duck?
Is the part on the left the rabbit’s ears or the duck’s bill?

I prefer to only move photos that are in complete public domain. But here are links to 3 photos of show jumping bunnies. This is IMO, a start in the right direction for pet bunnies. Breeding bunnies that are calm enough to go out in public, will walk on a leash, and who can be trained.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rabbit_agility_or_rabbit_show_jumping.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaninhoppning-king_of_joyride.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kanihyppy.jpg

Here’s a link to a domestic rabbit of some kind
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ro_pool_gilberte.jpg

Here is a marsh rabbit with short ears.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marsh_Rabbit.jpg

Unlike some fish, dogs, and cats, we don’t really have really weird rabbit breeds, yet.
Rabbits have been mostly bred for their pelts, and their meat.

Now that they are being bred and sold as pets, we will probably start to see the same deteriation in rabbits that we have in dogs.

Rabbit are cute, aren’t they? I would rather they be bred to be good pets than to be bred for oddities.

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10 Cottontail Rabbit

This a wild rabbit, isn’t he cute! The girl rabbits must think so too, thats why there are so many rabbits born in the spring and summer.

Notice the wolf coloring. Like a Black & tan dog (Rottweiler colored), but with a wolf color gene that turns the black into agouti color (flecked black and amber on each hair, making a grey color).

Some dometic rabbits are still bred in the agouti color. This is one named Lilly. I’d have put in on this page but it wasn’t in public domain like the photo of the wild rabbit.

Agouti colored domestic rabbit.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Domestic-rabbit-Lilly-washing-0a.jpg

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12 Jackabbit wtail

There are different types of rabbits.

And then there are hares.

The jackrabbit, like in the photo above, is NOT a rabbit, but a hare.

So why is it called a jack rabbit, not a jackhare?

Because rabbits & hares look so much alike that people got mixed up.

A baby rabbit is born with pink skin and no hair, their eyes are closed and they depend on their mother to nurse them. She must raise them in a nest or burrow.

A baby hare is born with his eyes open, and all of his fur. He is tiny but he can start to eat in about three days, although he will still be nursed by his mother.

You have to see the ears on this jackrabbit

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jackrabbit2.JPG

Look at the legs on this one!

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Btjackrabbit.jpg

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11 Jackrabbit, btail

Much better photo here:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Tailed_Jackrabbit_(318049593).jpg

See the long ears:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Table_Rock_Jackrabbit.jpg

Jackrabbits are fast, they can really run, except sometime when they overbreed and start to starve, then they don’t move very fast.

I read that the female can get pregnant while she is pregnant, so she has fertilized eggs ready to drop into her uterus when she gives birth. So conditions being right, she is always pregnant, but hunger in the fall and winter keeps her from going into season.

Nature was cruel to the female hare. Pregnant or hungry all the time?

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8 Toilet Bunny

Is going poo a talent?

Well, you gotta start somewhere. I prefer pets that can be trained to a more advanced degree, but if rabbits are to be domesticated into pets, not just hide, hair & meat, then someone has to start somewhere, and indoor pets have to be housebroke.

This rabbit is in a corner toilet pan. Good bunny!

Baby Ann Gorah Bunny Rabbit.

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7 Easy to Show Bunny

At some shows you can enter live rabbits or just enter the pelts.

Some people like to just show the pelts, because it is easier to transport the pelts, and you don’t have to feed, water, and clean cages.

But one guy said that each year, the same pelt wins.

The winning pelt is auctioned off. Whichever parent buys the winning pelt, slips it in with his kid’s stack of pelts next year, so his kid will win.

Although it cost good money to buy the winning pelt for your kid, after winning the next year, you just put the pelt in that year’s auction after the show, and get your money back.

I am against showing animals except in talent shows.

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6 Blindfold Bunny

No matter what the fur fetish people tell you, it IS possible to have too much hair!

People who breed animals for a specific use, have a goal, the animal must be good at it.

Sickly chickens don’t lay an egg per day. Sickly beef cattle don’t beef up. Dull brained or emotional unstable dogs don’t make good police dogs.

Rabbits are usefully bred for several reasons, like:

1. Meat: domestic rabbits yield meat, and yes it is delicious. Our ancestors probably got a lot of their protein from rabbits, so we are geared to like it’s flavor. And wild rabbits have lot of babies, something has to keep their numbers down, coyotes, foxes, owls, or hunters.

2. Laboratory creatures. Rabbits suffer a lot in experiments. A quick death from a fox, coyote or hunter would be kinder.

3. Pelt. That’s hides. The rabbit is killed and the fur, still with the skin, is cured.

4. Angora yarn, like from this Angora rabbit – like from the longer threada from Angora goats.

The rabbit in the photo above looks like an Angora show rabbit. If they actually clip the fur and make it into something, it could be considered usefully bred.

Angora rabbit’s are usually not made into pelts, their hair is long enough that it was combed out and twisted into yarn. But although Angora rabbits are often bred for shows, when was the last time you had an Angora rabbit hair sweater?

I had one once way back after high school, it was so warm and soft. No rabbit dies or is harmed for their hair. It is only PELTED rabbits that are killed. Angora rabbits hair is allowed to grow and then cut off just like having your own hair cut. But it would be nice if the rabbit’s bangs were clipped so he could see.

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5 Fuzzy Lop Bunny

Isn’t he a cute bunny? He looks so cuddly.

We had a neighbor’s Siamese cat that got injured in the winter. The veterinarian shaved part of the cats fur off to put in stitches. That cat had patches of dark fur for years.

Why did the fur grow in dark colored, where it had been shaved?

Siamese cats have a faulty gene that flubs up the production of the enzyme Tyrosinase.
This causes the cat to only be able to make pigment where his skin gets cold, and even then the pigment doesn’t come in in full strength.

I love Siamese cats, they have so much personality, but then I learned that cats with the heat sensitive color have vision problems.

Why would a heat sensitive color pattern affect vision?

Remember the reason Siamese cats are colorpoints (the body is lighter colored than the ears, face, tail, and legs) is because they have a mutation that flubs up the production of the enzyme Tyrosinase.

Genes work like letters in a book.
What if your computer changed every letter “b” that you typed into the letter “f”?
Your bunny would be funny.

“c”s into “h”s: on Sunday people would go to hhurhh.
“c”s into “m”s: Cute would mean mute.

The basis idea is that when you change one gene, you might only see one change, but there are other changes inside, because each gene codes for different things, like the letters on your keyboard aren’t just used for one word.

We don’t know what all the changes will be when we change the genes in an animal. When you change the ears, you aren’t just changing the ears, you are changing one of the letters in the alphabet in the animal’s book of life.

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4 Loppy Ears Bunny

This is a lop earred rabbit. He can’t get his ears up!

He is cute. People often like changes in animals that make them look more like us people, and more like babies. His floppy ears look like a girl’s hair, done up in pigtails.

When rabbits’ ears stood up, they looked like what they really were – a different species from us.

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3 Albino Bunny

One of the earliest noticeable mutations in changing a wild animal into a domestic one, is changes in color. People who breed animals often like something different from the type they were breeding away from – no matter what that change is.

This is an albino rabbit, like most albinos animals, the sunshine hurts his eyes.

Research laboratories like to use albino rabbits for their tests, because they all look the same, so the employees don’t get too fond of any particular rabbit because they all look the same.

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2 American Bunny

The first part of the domestication process often doesn’t change the part of the rabbit which you can see.

What is bred for, is tameness, the person wants a domesticated version. What usually happens is that the person is selecting for changes in biochemistry – they are breeding the most trusting and babyfied animals who look up to humans as parents, and who never reach the stage of mistrust.

The person then breeds only those few animals that are domesticated, and tame. This often means the person must cause the animals to mate incestuously.

Sometimes the domesticated animal looks the same as the wild type, but is not as vigorously healthy, because it is inbred, and because it was breed to have a biochemistry different from what is normal for its species.

If the person breeding the animals fails to make sure that each generation of her breeding stock is tame, there can be a reversion to the wild type, like with pet goldfish dumped into a lake, which revert to there ancestral look and behavior.

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1 Wild Bunny

Before people decide to take a wild animal that runs free, and turn it into a domestic BREED of animal, there was only the “wild type”.

This is a wild type of American Rabbit.

He is healthy. He is happy. He is free.

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