And together with a sheet of Downy, this is why I’m so fluffy

Animal control officers are trying to figure out why at least 19 domestic rabbits were living and breeding, unattended, in an aviary off White Road this week.

The rabbits were found Thursday at a rural Emerald City Way property, injured and malnourished alongside a pair of nesting geese, pigeons, doves and about 30 chickens, after a tip, according to Todd Stosuy of the county Animal Services Authority.

Two Rabbit Haven volunteers hopped to the task of rescuing 14 rabbits — a probably pregnant mother rabbit, her litter of day-old brood, four month-old bunnies and four male adults — from the enclosure Thursday.

“Each one we took out was worse than the one before, but the babies were cute as buttons,” Rabbit Haven volunteer Sherri Lynch said.

Animal control officers opened an investigation Friday into the bunnies’ care and who was responsible for them.

Animal neglect is a misdemeanor punishable by fines and a County Jail sentence.

Officers were alerted to the ailing rabbits a week ago when a woman living at the property brought in an injured bunny that was later euthanized, Stosuy said.

An animal control officer visited the site Monday and found rabbits living in burrows dug into the aviary’s dirt floor.

On Thursday, Rabbit Haven volunteers found two dead rabbits — an adult female and a four-week old — inside the 800-square-foot enclosure.

“The timing was good and bad,” Lynch said. “We got the babies out, but we didn’t get there in time to save the other adult”

Stosuy said they were lucky there weren’t more rabbits in the aviary.

Rabbits breed every 28 days and can have litters as large as 12, according to Heather Bechtel, director of Scotts Valley-based Rabbit Haven. The mother rabbit, a little chocolate-brown lop, had given birth to a litter of seven earlier this week and was probably already pregnant again, she said.

The adult males fought one another to breed with her, Lynch said. One had a serious eye injury and another had the top half-inch of his ears chewed off, she said.

“All the adults are covered in wounds, top to bottom,” Lynch said. “They battled”

In addition, the rabbits had not been properly fed, could only get water from a koi pond and were covered in bird feces from their feathered roommates roosting above.

“Our priority now is to get these guys medical care and get them into foster homes where there’s time and quiet and patience,” Lynch said. “I’ve seen hand-shy rabbits come around and become snuggle-bugs”

The bunnies were distributed to some of the 60 foster families Rabbit Haven uses to rehabilitate and socialize rescued rabbits.

The organization, started in 1987, puts rescued bunnies up for adoption and also offers classes about rabbit care in Scotts Valley and Watsonville.

“If we can help these bunnies heal, they’ll find homes,” she said.

YOU’VE heard of pampered pooches - now meet Bert the spoilt bunny.

While most rabbits have to make do with a hutch in the garden, Bert revels in luxury in his own double bedroom.

He also has the run of his owner Nina Whitehead’s four-bedroomed house.

But he needs the space… for one-year-old Bert is a monster.

A continental giant rabbit, he tips the scales at a hefty 20lbs and is two-and-a-half feet long.

And he is going to get even bigger as he has another six months’ growth left.

Proud “mum” Nina, aged 25, said most people thought it was odd that Bert had his own bedroom and lived in the house.

“He is as house-trained as a dog or a cat,” she said.

“But if you train them when they’re young, any rabbit can live quite happily and safely in a house.”

Nina has converted a bedroom in the Redditch house she shares with her partner into “Bert’s den”.

“It’s a double room and we’ve put in a cage, a bed, all of Bert’s toys and his litter tray,” she said.

“Because he’s so big we had to buy a dog bed for an Alsatian.

“But he doesn’t always sleep there as he pretty much has the run of the house and sleeps wherever he likes.”

Bert also has a monster appetite and munches his way through two big bowls of food a day, as well as treats of apples and carrots and his all-time favourite food - toast.

Nina, a management support officer for a Solihull company, said: “He’s very friendly and loves human company.

“When I sit down he’ll come and lie next to me. He used to sit on my lap but now he’s too heavy.”

The only surviving pair of endangered pygmy rabbits released as part of a program to increase their numbers in the wild have dodged coyotes, badgers, hawks and owls to find time for love, proud scientists said Thursday in announcing the rabbits have successfully bred.

“We were worried. It took them a little while, but they did what rabbits do best,” Rod Sayler, a Washington State University conservation biologist, said from Pullman.

Predators nearly wiped out the population of 20 captive-reared Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits released in March near Ephrata in central Washington. Two males that wandered outside the study area were captured and brought back to the captive breeding program, leaving only an adult male and female in the wild as of June 1.

But sprits were buoyed when doctoral student Len Zeoli last week found the female digging a burrow and lining it with grass, an indication she was preparing to give birth. Later, Zeoli spotted a partially grown juvenile rabbit near another burrow from what is believed to be a second litter of babies, called kits, Sayler said.

The male, which WSU students nicknamed Utapau after a planet in the Star Wars movies, and Impala, the female whose study number is F4, could breed again this year, Sayler said, noting that rabbit pairs can mate two to three times a season. Each litter produces from four to six kits.

It is not known whether the two litters came from the same female, or if one was the offspring of another female that was later killed by predators, he said.

The fact that there is more than one litter is encouraging, Sayler said.

“We considered that our first goal; to have that breeding success,” he said. “Our next goal is to have animals survive longer and have more kits.”

The rabbits, slightly larger than a man’s hand, eat sagebrush and are the only rabbits in the United States that dig their own burrows.

The Sagebrush Flat Wildlife Area where the captive rabbits were released about 10 miles north of Ephrata is considered the last native home of the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit. The rabbit was listed as a state endangered species in 1993 and protected under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2003.

None of the rabbits are known to exist in the wild. Descendants of the last 16 wild rabbits captured at the site have been crossbred with pygmy rabbits from Idaho, and some of those animals were released at Sagebrush Flat.

WSU’s Department of Natural Sciences, the Oregon Zoo and Northwest Trek near Tacoma, working with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, are raising between 75-100 pygmy rabbits in captivity for eventual release into the wild.

Sayler said scientists are debating when to have another release, but it could come as early as this fall. Additional steps will be taken to protect the females, such as erecting fences or cages around their burrows to keep predators out, Sayler said.

“We’re going to do everything we can to really increase the survival of the females,” Sayler said. “It will take years, maybe three to four years, of releases to get a population large enough to be sustaining. This is the first really tiny step.”

The reasons the Columbia Basin rabbits declined are not precisely known, although scientists suspect inbreeding among such a small population was a major factor. Range fires, farming, disease and predators also are thought to have taken their toll.

Dave Hays, endangered species coordinator for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said in a news release that scientists hope to increase success in the future.

“With so few rabbits reintroduced to the wild, and so many natural odds to overcome, the birth of two litters is both unexpected and exciting,” he said. “Biologists viewed the initial release primarily as a learning tool to improve reintroduction techniques and boost survival rates in the future.”

POLICE officers forced entry into a home in a bid to help a women heard crying only to find it was her rabbit who had called for attention.

Operators from a telephone monitoring service connected to the house told Bromley Police they could hear a woman crying and whimpering down the line in Shurlock Drive, Orpington.

It was believed the resident was in need of immediate help.

Two officers could not find a way of getting into the flat and no neighbours or relatives could assist them.

They demolished both the door and frame and a large part of the surrounding wall and hallway.

Once inside, both officers were confronted by a large brown lop-eared Dutch rabbit hopping around the front room and whimpering.

The rabbit, named Humphrey, had pulled the cord which telephones the monitoring service while his owner was out shopping at around 1pm on May 27.

An effort to save a rare species of rabbit in the Florida Keys has led to a showdown between two apparent loves of Hugh Hefner: stray cats and Playboy bunnies.

The species, which references the Playboy magazine founder in its Latin name, Sylivilagus palustris hefneri, is an endangered marsh rabbit named for the mogul after he paid for its study more than 20 years ago.

But the population of the Playboy bunny is dwindling, and feral cats are likely to blame, said Anne Morkill, who manages the National Key Deer Refuge where the animals are found.

“It’s widely known across the country that cats are predators of native wildlife, ” Morkill said. “This issue with cats is not just marsh rabbits.”

The refuge announced this month that it plans to trap the cats and haul them to shelters beginning this weekend, making cat advocates yowl. They asked Hefner, as the rabbits’ namesake, to intervene.

This time, more than 20 years later, he’ll use his fortune to help the cats.

“I have made a contribution to Stand Up for Animals, ” Hefner said in a statement. “It’s an organization on the front lines, which I’m confident will provide the greatest chance of saving both the rabbits and the cats.”

Linda Gottwald, the founder and CEO of Stand Up For Animals, said she hopes to use the $5, 000 donation to offer more spay-and-neuter clinics and to buy land for a cat sanctuary, where the feral cats can be relocated if they aren’t adopted.

She’s named a big tom cat at the shelter “Hef” in his honor.

“I was delighted that he even bothered to respond, ” Gottwald said. “I really think he really does care.”

Animal lover

Rob Hilburger, Playboy spokesman, said Hefner has always loved animals. His mansion in Beverly Hills has a zoo license and a staff to care for the monkeys, flamingos and peacocks it houses.

“He’s definitely an animal lover, ” Hilburger said.

It’s also home to the less exotic - a couple of stray cats, named Yeller and Little Bit, who live there as their adopted home. The sympathy for the stray cats, made famous on the reality show about the mansion called The Girls Next Door, are part of the reason cat advocates thought to appeal to Hefner.

“Once they stumbled upon the grounds, they never wanted to leave, ” Hilburger said about the adopted pets.

Plenty of feral cats

The controversy between the rabbits and cats arose earlier this month after the National Key Deer Refuge on Big Pine Key announced plans to capture the cats for the first time in its history.

In 2000, they estimated 100-300 Hefner rabbits roamed the refuge. It is unclear exactly how many remain, though the number appears to have plummeted.

A study from the late 1990s found that predators killed 53 percent of Hefner rabbits. Though some are natural predators, including snakes, alligators and birds of prey, the majority were feral cats.

Biologist Paige Schmidt said she’s never seen a rabbit in her research because they’re so rare. But she’s seen plenty of cats.

“The decline of the rabbits is so severe, ” Schmidt said. “They have suffered a lot recently. That’s why we’re trying to recover the population using any means that we have available.”

A rare rabbit

The Hefner rabbits evolved about 10, 000 years ago as a subspecies of the marsh rabbit found in mainland Florida, after the sea level dropped and isolated the Keys, Morkill said. That means the rabbits are found nowhere else in the world.

True to their name, the Hefner rabbits breed year-round and with multiple partners. But that hasn’t been enough to overcome habitat loss and predation.

The refuge has promised to capture the cats humanely in live trap cages and with bait such as fish oil. But cat lovers said the policy equates to euthanasia since no one will adopt a wild cat at the pound.

And the Keys has a particular problem with strays, said Gottwald, who runs the shelter there. Snowbirds come and go and leave their pets behind.

Becky Robinson, president and co-founder of Alley Cat Allies, in Washington, D.C., wrote a letter to Hefner. She thinks the problem will remain until the refuge adopts a trap-neuter-return policy as a more humane and effective way to curb the cat population.

“We do not place value on one species over another, ” Robinson said. “Feral cats are not the cause of the decimation and decline. Humans are.”

A Hungarian research team reported the first Central European cloned rabbit in Godollo, near Budapest, on Friday, noting that this makes them one of five teams worldwide to successfully clone a bunny.

The rabbit, named Tapsilla - equivalent to Thumpella in English - was born last week, said Professor Andras Dinnyes, head of the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Centre’s research team, adding that she had been a twin, but that her sib had died shortly after their birth by C-section. Tapsilla is doing quite well, Dinnyes said.

Cloned mammals are an excellent way to model various disorders that affect humans, Dinnyes said, and different animals can help researchers to learn more about specific ailments. Rabbits show promise in contributing to the study of vascular disorders and can play a major role in the development of new medications, he said.

One of the world’s rarest rabbits was spotted in Indonesia for just the third time in the past 35 years, underscoring the importance of conserving the region’s threatened rain forests, said a conservation group on Thursday.

Two grainy images shot by a camera trap at night show the half-metre-long Sumatran striped rabbit nibbling on forest undergrowth in the Bukit Barisan National Park, said the World Conservation Union.

The rare species of rabbit was last photographed in 2000, and the last sighting by a scientist was in 1972.

“This rabbit is so poorly known that any proof of its continued existence at all is great news, and confirms the conservation importance of Sumatra’s forests,” said Colin Poole, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Asia Programme.

The rabbit is only known to exist in the forests of Sumatra, and thought to be the only representative of its genus.

It is listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union, meaning it faces a high risk of extinction from a range of threats, including the loss of habitat to farming.

In 1999, researchers discovered another striped rabbit in the Annamite Mountains that straddle Laos and Vietnam.

Although both seem similar in appearance, genetic samples revealed the Sumatran and Annamite striped rabbits were separate - though closely related - species.

According to the findings, both species have been diverging for about eight million years.

The rare pygmy rabbit is not much bigger than your hand, which explains in part why it’s so rare: bigger animals like to eat it.
Now, it’s making a comeback. Twenty of them were released yesterday in a remote wildlife reserve in central Washington.

They’re the product of a captive breeding program run by Washington State University and the Portland, Oregon zoo. Researchers bred the last known Columbia Basin wild rabbits with the more prolific Idaho pygmy rabbits.

The Pacific regional director of the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service compares it to the effort to save the California condor, only harder, because as he puts it, “a lot more things eat bunnies than condors.”

Still, he says, anytime you can bring something back from zero, it’s cause to celebrate.