Comment on Feces is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 day agoI’ve always wondered if the people who keep pet rabbits and teach them to use litter boxes are hurting the bunnies by preventing them from doing this. Or will the rabbits just eat clay-covered cecotropes?
call_me_xale@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Bunny owner here, I can answer this!
Rabbits produce two kinds of feces: normal “waste” feces and edible “cecotropes” or “cecal pellets”. They generally eat the cecotropes immediately after excreting them, and only drop the waste into their litterboxes.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
How do they know‽
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
One would assume by feel during excretion…
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Do they deposit the cecal pellets in the litterboxes, or do they just do them any where they please and immediately munch on em?
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
They deposit them directly into their mouth. They know when they’re about to produce one and they reach down there with their mouth and consume it directly.
If you think about where wild rabbits spend most of their time (underground in burrows surrounded by dirt) this makes total sense. By not allowing cecotropes to touch the ground, they avoid contamination with soil-borne pathogens.