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"The Journal News" featured Haub Visiting Scholar Delcianna Winders in "Most bunnies bought for Easter 'end up dead or abandoned'"
"The Journal News" featured Haub Visiting Scholar Delcianna Winders in "Most bunnies bought for Easter 'end up dead or abandoned'"
Everything you think you know about rabbits is wrong.
Let’s start with the basics: They don’t eat that many carrots.
“In children’s literature there are tons and tons of rabbits eating carrots,” said Mary Basile of White Plains, president of an organization called Rabbit Rescue & Rehab. “That should be a treat in serious moderation. The primary source of food for a rabbit is hay.”
Carrots are just the beginning. Basile said rabbits are “misunderstood.”
“Everything we’re taught and learn about rabbits is very, very wrong,” she said, though the most important misconception, for Basile, is that bunnies make a good gift.
Rabbits are often given as gifts for Easter, "a time of year when many rabbits are impulsively purchased, most of them only to end up dead or abandoned before their first birthday," said Delcianna Winders, an attorney with PETA and the Haub Visiting Scholar specializing in animal law at Pace University Law School.
People believe “they’re these cuddly, suitable-for-children pets,” Basile said. “That’s totally, completely false.”
Let’s debunk another common rabbit misconception: They don’t like to be cuddled.
Basile said picking a rabbit up off the ground often sparks a fight-or-flight response. They’re prey, and are carried off by hawks and coyotes.
“When a human picks up a rabbit it’s that same sensation,” and it will sometimes bite defensively in response, Basile said. “The way that people interact with them really brings out the worst in them.”
Unfortunately for the rabbits, people learn quickly how difficult they are to care for.
“They’re the third-most surrendered animal at shelters,” Basile said. “People buy them from breeders and then have no idea how to care for them.”
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