It seems pretty well accepted that carrots (other than the leafy part) are not a natural food for rabbits and they shouldn’t be fed too much of it. (e.g. here, but all other sources I’ve seen seem consistent about this.) Question then is how this myth would have gotten started.
A lot of sources (e.g. here) attribute it to Bugs Bunny, and Bugs Bunny’s fondness for carrots is in turn attributed to an imitation of a scene in It Happened One Night (which was a popular film in the years preceding the BB movie where the carrot theme first appeared).
However, my wife pointed out that the Rabbit character in Winnie the Pooh is also particularly fond of carrots, and that character predates Bugs Bunny carrot-loving character by 14 years.
Is it possible that the original WTP character wasn’t particularly fond of carrots but was later modified to confirm with the Bugs Bunny stereotype? (I haven’t read that book in decades.)
Everything I’ve seen points to Bugs Bunny being the origin of this one. Never saw anything on Rabbit. It was added by Disney.
There are 113 mentions of Rabbit in Winnie-The-Pooh and All, All, All and the word Carrot doesn’t appear once. In The house at Pooh Corner 199 Rabbit mentions, 0 carrots.
Huh, not often that I get to move a thread INTO General Questions.
[Not moderating]
Carrots might not be particularly good for rabbits, but they probably do like them, and eat them as a part of their natural diet. All herbivores love sugary foods.
In Disney’s version of the story, Country Boy (1935), Peter is shown wolfing down what are definitely carrots. This predates Bugs Bunny’s first appearance in 1940.
I recall reading that Popeye’s fondness of spinach was meant to encourage children to eat vegetables. If that’s true, maybe there was a similar idea behind Bugs Bunny and his carrots.
IIRC the RAF publicly attributed their aerial victories over Germans to carrots granting pilots improved vision rather than reveal that new-fangled thing called RADAR.
I wouldn’t say that rabbits liking carrots is a “myth” or that they are not a “natural food” just because wild rabbits living in places away from people wouldn’t encounter them. The European Rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus, the source of domestic rabbits, does in fact include roots in the diet, and root vegetables when they have access to them. Horses like sugar cubes even though they are not a part of a natural diet. I would say it’s a myth that carrots should be a major part of a rabbit’s diet.
Rabbits no doubt like carrots because of their sugar content. The problem is that people give them too much. It’s like feeding people on a diet consisting mostly of chocolate chip cookies and potato chips. So a lot of websites concerned with care of rabbits will try to counter the stereotype of rabbits eating a lot of carrots.
Although I gave a couple examples of rabbits shown liking carrots pre-Bugs Bunny, they are often shown eating other vegetables as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bugs were the source of the idea that rabbits eat carrots above all else.
Also, wild precursors of carrots are much smaller and less tasty/sugary.
I am not an Oryctolagusollogist, but suspect an occasional carrot treat is fine. And not just for herbivores - Pluto the spaniel is fond of munching on carrots.
If you look at the first link cited in the OP it says: “Rabbits don’t naturally eat root vegetables/fruit”, and I’ve seen numerous other cites saying essentially the same (e.g. here). Apparently they do like them, but it’s not a natural food for them.
The thread was about the notion that carrots are a particular rabbit food. Sorry if this was unclear.
Of note, the earliest cite in this thread, the picture with the puppy and rabbits, also has lettuce (or at least, some sort of green) in the rabbit coop. That’s consistent with “rabbits like vegetables in general”, rather than “rabbits like carrots specifically”.
And long after Bugs, but the rabbits in Watership Down list both lettuce and carrots as examples of “flayrah”, literally “food of princes”, which they’ll happily eat whenever they get a chance, but are not a routine part of their diet.
Yes, I looked at the link. I don’t consider the RSPCA (or the Washington Post) to be an authoritative cite on rabbit diet and natural history. The extent to which the statement is true depends on how exactly you define “naturally.” Rabbits don’t “naturally” eat carrots because they don’t occur in their “natural” habitat, although you could argue that vegetable farms are now part of their natural habitat. They (and other sites making such statements) are overstating the case in order to make a point, that people feed rabbits more carrots than they should.
I’m just clarifying in what sense carrots aren’t a “natural” rabbit food. They may be a favorite food even if it’s not natural. It’s not a myth that horses like sugar cubes, even though they’re not a “natural” horse food.
Interesting. I guess rabbits - carrots is sort of like tuna - cats. Do they make carrot flavored rabbit treats (such that they have a long shelf-life)? I know they do not make mouse flavored cat food.
I’ve had various rodent pets; hamsters, gerbils, mice. They were fond of yogurt drops which were a treat (not a staple of the diet!) and were sweet, so I assumed rabbits would like them too.
I was going to make that analogy. Tuna and milk are stereotypical favorite foods of cats, even though they are not part of a “natural” diet. (Adult cats are even lactose-intolerant.)
