I’ve heard basically the same thing in regards to chimps or monkeys and bananas. They will eat them and do love them but it’s almost like giving them a candy bar or something.
I had a detailed post and managed to lose it, so I’m just going to address this in summary form.
The association of rabbits with carrots long predates Bugs Bunny. Poisoned carrots were used as bait for rabbits in 19th century Australia. Early 20th century stories and pictures of rabbits emphasize their fondness for carrots. I even found a 1915 article about farming rabbits that emphasizes the importance of carrots as a rabbit food.
I can attest first hand that Buttercup the Bunny does indeed love carrots, they are a close second to dried apples. They are, however, not a part of his natural diet. Rabbits are grazers, and should eat primarily grass. Timothy hay is the recommended food for rabbits.
My experience with human beings (including myself) suggests that fondness for a food and “shouldn’t be fed too much of it” are not mutually exclusive.
Beatrix Potter’s books have been popular since they appeared in the early 1900s. As Colibri mentions in Peter Rabbit is shown eating radishes that look a lot like carrots. In her Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45265/45265-h/45265-h.htm
a nice gentle rabbit is given a carrot by his mother
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45265/45265-h/images/i013.jpg
and the bad rabbit steals it:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45265/45265-h/images/i019.jpg
Potter supposedly used real animals for models for her illustrations but I have to say that the bad rabbit looks more human than animal
Next thing you’re going to tell me is that mice don’t have a primarily cheese-based diet and an elephant can’t sustain itself indefinitely on peanuts.
And did my dog die because I only put bones in its food bowl?
Actually, I think before the advent of commercial dog food, the house dog was primarily given kitchen scraps, so bones may have been a main food source back then, which may explain where that idea came from.
We used to give our rabbit untrimmed whole carrots and it was fun to watch her “inhale” the entire vegetable, starting with the green top. She’d stay in one spot and pull the carrot bit by bit onto her mouth until she got to the pointed end.
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Go to Google books. Type in ‘Rabbits’ + ‘Carrots’ in the search bar and select 19th century. You’ll find a reasonable number of 19th century references that carrots are a typical / preferred / favourite rabbit food, including in various rabbit-keeping manuals.
Carrots certainly don’t dominate in 19th century pictures of rabbits, but they are there. It comes into its own when rabbits are anthropomorphised, so carrots become a handy food prop (in every sense).
I’ll send my younger two out in the spring to pick dandelion flowers for the rabbit. It is very amusing to watch him eat them stem end first.