How to Put Your Rabbit in a Trance - help for the No campaign as theyve been having a bit o bother wi their rabbit . . . Putting your rabbit on his back and watching him seemingly completely relax is often called “trancing” or “hypnotizing” your rabbit. Actually, it is neither one. Is your rabbit in bliss? Not really. The state you have put your rabbit in is part of a bag of instinctual tricks to escape a predator. When a rabbit is grabbed by a predator the rabbit will “freeze” and imitate prey that has been killed… a dead rabbit. By doing this the rabbit will boost its chances of escape and fatal injuries. Trancing is Tonic Immobility or TI from the scientists perspective. It is considered to be a fear motivated defense mechanism. TI is considered a last attempt for prey to escape being eaten by a predator. When the predator drops the supposedly “dead” rabbit or just relaxes its hold a bit, the rabbit will burst to life and try to escape. Rabbits will fight as a last resort if this fails. In a study conducted by McBride et al (Rabbits and tonic immobility) the results suggested that rabbits show symptoms that are in line with being stressed after being in a TI state, such as a faster heart rate and breathing. Should you “trance” your rabbit? No, unless absolutely necessary. When rabbits are tranced, they are at the highest possible fear level, and they can possibly die from fear. Nevertheless, putting a rabbit in this position makes clipping nails, checking the body and head for abscesses and other problems easy. It is a useful way to restrain the rabbit for a few minutes. . . or it might just be enough to piss the rabbit off to such an extent that it tells you to shove your lettuce up yer arse forever . . . .
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 18:31:23 +0000
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