What Should I Do When My Rabbit Bites Me?

It happens more often than one would think — a previously nonaggressive rabbit suddenly starts biting. What is the reason behind the biting and what should you do?

Click Here For a Guide to Understanding Your Rabbits Diet.

In the immediate aftermath of the bite, uttering a high-pitched squeal like, "Eeek!" lets your bun know that they have hurt you. This is important, because not all nips and bites are done with the intention of inflicting pain. Then, you should wash the area and apply a clean bandage to the site of the bite.

What You Should Absolutely Never Do

Although it may feel instinctual to swat your bunny after it nips or bites you, this is absolutely the worst possible reaction you can have. Remember, your rabbit is not a rambunctious puppy or angry dog. Hitting or otherwise hurting your rabbit for biting is likely to make them more aggressive and destroy any chance of a bond between you.

Why Is My Rabbit Biting Me?

Bunnies can bite for any number of reasons. Let's review some of the most common:

• The rabbit is in pain. As with other animals, it can be challenging to determine whether your rabbit is injured or sick. A tooth may be abscessed, or it might have an injured paw. A trip to the vet can rule out any physical problems.

• Bunnies bite out of fear. Some rabbit bites are triggered out of fear. That can be a generalized fear or something specific, such as being picked up, because most rabbits don't like to be held.

• An unspayed or unneutered bunny is sexually frustrated. Unless you plan to breed rabbits, all bunnies should be spayed or neutered when they are about four months old. That's the equivalent to their "teenage" years when the hormones are raging. It's a kindness to them to get them fixed. Also, keep in mind that it can take as long as a month post-surgery for those hormones to stop dominating the bunny's behavior.

• Your hand looks like a threat to the rabbit. When it comes to vision, rabbits have very good distance vision but anything right in front of their faces appears as a blur. That hand in front of their face could be a deadly foe, so they reactively bite it.

• Rabbits are territorial. Many rabbit owners notice that their bunnies tend to bite when they try to remove them from their cages. Instead of reaching in and grabbing a surprised rabbit, open the door and let them emerge on their own when they feel comfortable doing so.

• Your bunny isn't being fed the proper food. If you were fed a diet of unappealing gruel day in and day out, you might be tempted to bite the hand that feeds you, too. All rabbits should eat a diet of quality hay and crunchy grass hays to remain at their optimum health.

All of the above could be the root cause of your rabbit biting you. But sometimes there may be other, less common, factors at play. We'll examine some of those next.

Your Bunny Was Abused

It's not always possible to know much about the circumstances of your bunny's life before you adopted it, therefore making sure you are kind and gentle is extremely important as they get use to you and their new environment.

Aggressive rabbits usually have legitimate reasons for their aggression toward people. Unless they have known love and gentleness from human hands, they don't understand how to properly respond to their new owners' gentle kindness.

It Was Starved In the Past

Rabbits that come from animal hoarders are often food aggressive because they had to fight their littermates and others for every scrap and morsel. Thus, when you approach them with their tasty dinner hay, they react badly because they think they won't get to eat their fill otherwise.

How to Deal With All of These Issues

It can't be stressed enough that you have to exercise patience to help your bunny get over these issues of aggressive biting. You have to put your detective hat on and try to determine what is causing your rabbit to act aggressively.

Was It Really a Bite or Just a Nip?

What you thought was a bite may have only been a nip from your bun as a way to communicate or get you to pay more attention to them. Bunnies also groom each other with a series of nips and licks. Your rabbit is not intending to harm you when it gently nips you. But it does mean that you need to understand the difference (and pay your bun enough attention).