Your Ultimate Guide To Barbados

Rabbits

Rabbits can be found in a variety of breeds but usually in white on the island of Barbados. There are a few rabbit farmers on the island though in recent times they have been affected by predial larceny.

Characteristics

These cute, long-eared, gentle tempered mammals are from the Leporidae family. The two front paws have 5 toes each with the extra called the dewclaw, while the hind feet have 4 toes each. They move around on the tips of their toes and by using their very powerful hind legs to hop in a zig-zag manner.

Rabbits reach maturity quickly and have a rather rapid reproductive rate. In just one year in ideal conditions, a doe (a female rabbit) can produce approximately 60 kittens.

There are quite easy to have as pets as they are very peaceful creatures. Their diets consists mainly of plant derivatives and as such, can be easily fed scraps from the kitchen and garden.

With eyes fixed in one position, rabbits have exceptional field of vision sight and can readily take stock of what is going on overhead. They have two sets of incisor teeth that fall one behind the other.

A great majority of the digestion that takes place in a rabbit takes place in its large intestine and cecum. Both fibrous and digestible material passing through the intestinal tract are separated by way of the unique arrangement of muscles of the cecum. Fibrous material is eliminated as feces, while the more nutritious material is held closely in a mucous lining as a cecotrope.

The rabbit consumes the highly nutritious cecotropes or "night feces", that supply the rabbit with the correct amount of nutrients necessary for sustaining good health. The mucous coating allows the nutrients to pass through the adicic stomach for digestion in the intestines. This process allows rabbits to extract the necessary nutrients from their food.

There are some animals that need to digest their food twice in order to get all the nutrients from it and such is the case with the rabbit.