UK rabbit owners can recognise pain in their pets, study finds

Press release issued: 27 March 2024

Rabbits are popular family pets, with around 1.5 million in the UK and it is important that owners can recognise when their animal is in pain, and know when to seek help to protect their rabbit's welfare. New research by the University of Bristol Veterinary School has found the majority of rabbit owners could list signs of pain and could mostly identify pain-free rabbits and those in severe pain, but many lacked knowledge of the subtler sign of pain.

The study provides the first insight into how rabbit owners identify pain and their general ability to apply this knowledge to detect pain accurately.

Rabbits are prey species and have evolved to hide signs of illness and pain. Recent research has developed pain scales for use by veterinary professionals - including the Bristol Rabbit Pain Scale (BRPS) - but to date research hasn’t investigated rabbit owners’ ability to recognise pain in their animals. The study explored how owners identify pain in their pet rabbits and their ability to correctly spot different levels of pain, and to find out areas in which owners would benefit from education.

Respondents to a survey were mostly able to identify five signs of pain (such as anorexia, and changes in posture and movement), but many were less aware that decreases in grooming behaviour and changes to eye and ear position can also be signs of pain. Women, people who worked with rabbits, and those with experience of their rabbit having an operation recognised pain more accurately. Overall, 98.6 per cent of respondents thought correctly that rabbits felt pain as much or more than dogs and cats.

Read the full University of Bristol news item

'An investigation into how accurately UK rabbit owners identify pain in their pet rabbits' by Charlotte Forder, Livia Benato and Nicola Rooney in BMC Veterinary Research [open access]