Rabbit - Critically Endangered

“Tierschutz Euskirchen” says that someone found a wild hare and mistook it for an orphaned cub – he didn’t know that it’s perfectly normal for female hares to make their babies rest in a not too deep hole on a meadow or in a field only to visit them for a few minutes per day to nurse and to clean them which usually occurs late at night. Anyway he took the animal and brought it to a zoo where it was decided that it should be bottle-fed and later released if possible. At first all went well, but after about a week the poor thing became weaker and eventually died. They say it either died of too long exposure between getting taken from its nest and ending up in a new nest in the zoo or due to the fact that the milk they offered there was slightly different from the milk of wild hares.
If they had just had told themselves “Well, I don’t know much about hares, so maybe there is nothing unusual about the hare being in this position!” and had just walked away, the poor thing maybe would still be alive. In fact even if it would be dead, there is no reason to pick up random cubs of animals you know nothing about. Let’s pretend a carnivore had killed the hare in the wild. This would have been a much quicker and more painless death than all the suffering and fear it went through the last days before its death.
In addition to that the carcass now will be simply dumped somewhere, while in the wild many scavengers would have fed on the small body.
Also statistically-seen many cubs die in the wild without us intervening. We can’t save them all, so why not let nature take its course – especially with animals that man hasn’t driven to extinction yet.
P.S. The Riverine rabbit (native to South Africa) and the San Jose brush rabbit (native to the Gulf of California) however raise their youngsters in burrows and are critically endangered due to human beings. Thus if you are sure to recognize a cub of one of these, you should always help them.

“Tierschutz Euskirchen” says that someone found a wild hare and mistook it for an orphaned cub – he didn’t know that it’s perfectly normal for female hares to make their babies rest in a not too deep hole on a meadow or in a field only to visit them for a few minutes per day to nurse and to clean them which usually occurs late at night. Anyway he took the animal and brought it to a zoo where it was decided that it should be bottle-fed and later released if possible. At first all went well, but after about a week the poor thing became weaker and eventually died. They say it either died of too long exposure between getting taken from its nest and ending up in a new nest in the zoo or due to the fact that the milk they offered there was slightly different from the milk of wild hares.
If they had just had told themselves “Well, I don’t know much about hares, so maybe there is nothing unusual about the hare being in this position!” and had just walked away, the poor thing maybe would still be alive. In fact even if it would be dead, there is no reason to pick up random cubs of animals you know nothing about. Let’s pretend a carnivore had killed the hare in the wild. This would have been a much quicker and more painless death than all the suffering and fear it went through the last days before its death.
In addition to that the carcass now will be simply dumped somewhere, while in the wild many scavengers would have fed on the small body.
Also statistically-seen many cubs die in the wild without us intervening. We can’t save them all, so why not let nature take its course – especially with animals that man hasn’t driven to extinction yet.
P.S. The Riverine rabbit (native to South Africa) and the San Jose brush rabbit (native to the Gulf of California) however raise their youngsters in burrows and are critically endangered due to human beings. Thus if you are sure to recognize a cub of one of these, you should always help them.

Last week there was a documentary-movie on a German TV-channel. It was about why most children’s movies allegedly have a bad effect on how people interact with animals and even though I found this subject silly – what kind of adult would treat an animal the way e.g. Snow White from that Disney-movie interacted with animals and what kind of adult would not reprimand his child for let’s say picking up the cub of a wild animal like they do in numerous movies aimed at children? – I just was curious what this would lead to. I just was hoping for some medical information and they did not disappoint me: Leptospirosis for example is a disease that often causes kidney-failure or lung-bleeding and as a result also death. It is transmitted by having contact with most rodents – including rabbits – and marine mammals. Of course the animal in question at first needs to be infected with this disease itself to transmit anything, but still chances are high that if you accidentally come to close to the urine – it is transmitted through urine – of an infected animal, you may fall ill. In the documentary-movie they used this as a reason to tell people that unlike most movies and books it can be lethal to approach a bunny in the wild or let’s say a dolphin or a seal in the ocean as you neither know where its pee is nor how sick the animal in question really is. However I – as I don’t really care about the morals children’s movies teach – thought a step beyond…Doesn’t this also mean that by eating blubber you support that each year in Taiji and other areas there is a great risk that whalers succumb to this disease and even transmit this horrible disease to their loved ones? Doesn’t this also mean that by consuming the meat of bunnies you state that you condone the fact that on each hunt for wild rabbits a hunter risks falling ill and even transmitting this disease, while many of the workers who interact with bunnies from feeding-lots and fur farms are exposed to about the same risk?
By the way the exact death toll per year is unknown.

Last week there was a documentary-movie on a German TV-channel. It was about why most children’s movies allegedly have a bad effect on how people interact with animals and even though I found this subject silly – what kind of adult would treat an animal the way e.g. Snow White from that Disney-movie interacted with animals and what kind of adult would not reprimand his child for let’s say picking up the cub of a wild animal like they do in numerous movies aimed at children? – I just was curious what this would lead to. I just was hoping for some medical information and they did not disappoint me: Leptospirosis for example is a disease that often causes kidney-failure or lung-bleeding and as a result also death. It is transmitted by having contact with most rodents – including rabbits – and marine mammals. Of course the animal in question at first needs to be infected with this disease itself to transmit anything, but still chances are high that if you accidentally come to close to the urine – it is transmitted through urine – of an infected animal, you may fall ill. In the documentary-movie they used this as a reason to tell people that unlike most movies and books it can be lethal to approach a bunny in the wild or let’s say a dolphin or a seal in the ocean as you neither know where its pee is nor how sick the animal in question really is. However I – as I don’t really care about the morals children’s movies teach – thought a step beyond…Doesn’t this also mean that by eating blubber you support that each year in Taiji and other areas there is a great risk that whalers succumb to this disease and even transmit this horrible disease to their loved ones? Doesn’t this also mean that by consuming the meat of bunnies you state that you condone the fact that on each hunt for wild rabbits a hunter risks falling ill and even transmitting this disease, while many of the workers who interact with bunnies from feeding-lots and fur farms are exposed to about the same risk?
By the way the exact death toll per year is unknown.

“Tierschutz Euskirchen” says that a heavy disease that can be transferred from bunnies to human beings – also by eating bunnies that have this disease – now was diagnosed on a bunny in Lippe (Germany).