In the wake of the video I posted of my feral chicken, I had a couple of Animal Intelligence readers send me other chicken videos. First up is this video of two rabbits who are apparently fighting (I can’t tell — I don’t know much about rabbit behavior), only to be separated by two chickens:
What in the world is happening here? Are the rabbits fighting? What prompts the chickens to interfere? This isn’t behavior I have ever seen before.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
This video is mind blowing… those chickens really seem like bouncers.
I had a couple of rabbits as pets when I was younger and my opinion is that these 2 rabbits were definitely fighting. Rabbits don’t play-fight like predatorial animals like cats do, and it doesn’t look like mating behavior either.
Very intriguing. On watching it a couple of times what I think of is that the roosters, being notorious scrappers themselves, are automatically drawn to the conflict. They really do seem to be barnyard cops here but I think that it has a lot to do with their desire to show the rabbits who is in charge. Odd that the roosters do it as a team, too.
Interesting to watch the rabbits freeze, which we know they do , the effect on the chickens is to subdue them and they lose the stimulus which Mike reasonably describes.
1: The Rabbits seem to fight which activates the chickens natural tendancies..
2: The Chickens rush in for the fight..
3: This activates the Rabbits natural tendancies to freeze..
4: The Chickens get bored, or even quite possibly forget why they are stood there in the first place and thus walk off.
Seems logical.