Cecotropes are softer, stickier, and are usually not even seen by a rabbit owner, because a rabbit often consumes them almost as they are exiting the body. The cecotropes are produced in the cecum, a part of the intestinal tract of a rabbit, by fermentation of the food a rabbit eats. They are also only produced at night, so a rabbit will be seen eating them late at night or early in the morning. Usually the only time you will see cecotropes in your rabbit's cage or on its fur is if your rabbit is not feeling well and therefore not eating its cecotropes.
Cecotropes are full of nutrients that a rabbit needs. These special feces contain more protein and vitamins than normal poops have, so by consuming its cecotropes and a healthy diet , a rabbit is getting all of the important nutrients that it needs to stay healthy. It is completely normal behavior for rabbits to eat cecotropes at night or early in the morning, but it is not normal for them to eat their normal stools during the day.
If you aren't sure if your rabbit eats its poop, there are a few key indicators you can look for. First, check your rabbit's hind end. A rabbit normally has a clean rear end because, even though cecotropes are soft and sticky, it is consuming these poops as they are exiting the body. If there are small, soft, sticky poops stuck to your rabbit's fur, then your rabbit isn't eating its cecotropes.
If there aren't any of these soft poops, then your rabbit is consuming them as it should be. Second, check the litter box and cage floor where your rabbit sleeps. If all of the poops that are present appear round and normal, then your rabbit is probably eating its cecotropes. Third, watch your rabbit late at night or early in the morning.
Plant material is very dense and loaded with fiber, making it difficult to digest. Because of this, a lot of the plant material passes through your rabbit without being fully digested.
To avoid wasting all these nutrients, rabbits re-ingest them through their cecotropes. This allows their body to get a second chance at digesting that fibrous plant material. The second pass is much easier since the plant material has already been broken down to some degree and is now easier to digest.
Absolutely not! If you happen to find that your rabbit is not eating its cecotropes, then you need to worry. Your rabbit needs the nutrients contained in those cecotropes that it can only digest the second time through. Granted, this only applies to cecotropes. If your rabbit is eating the little hard droppings it produces during the day, then you should stop it and contact a vet as there might be an underlying issue to consider.
Some animals such as flies and other insects will eat feces as a means of sustenance, but it is not as common a practice in vertebrates. Some mammals will eat feces on rare occasions, such as dogs. Although it is not well understood in dogs, it is believed to be a practice which helps digestion. However, it some animals it can be a sign of disease or dietary insufficiency.
Rabbits are herbivorous animals. Their diet is mainly made of fibrous hay, supplemented by vegetables and fruit. However, their diet is so rich in fiber and cellulose that it can be difficult to digest. Although the food may have reached the end of the digestive tract, not all of the nutrients have been absorbed by the rabbit's body.
The fiber in hay for rabbits makes intestinal transit efficient, but in some ways, too inefficient. It is for this reason lagomorphs, a category of mammal including rabbits, hares and pikas , eat their own poop.
In doing so, they are able to fully digest their food and reduce waste. Although we may think of eating their own poop as being unpleasant it is purely practical. Rabbits eat their own poop to digest nutrients they were unable to process the first time round.
However, a rabbit cannot eat all of their poop. Not all types of rabbit poop are digestible, something we explain further below. Rabbits are prolific poopers. They have the ability to egest between to individual pellets per day. These pellets are small torpedo shaped droppings which are dark and about the size of a squashed pea.
Rabbits will leave two types of poop:. These two types of excrement are the most common and the ones that indicate that the animal is healthy. Although technically a type of coprophagy, it is also known as cecophagy or cecotrophy.
On the other hand, when the stool is deformed or not completely formed, it indicates that the rabbit is suffering from stress , a health problem or a poor diet. The digestive process is similar to a cow chewing its cud, and is called caecotrophy.
Rabbits are herbivores, meaning that they only eat plants which are particularly difficult to digest. When your bunny eats, the first part of digestion is the mouth, where the food is chewed and swallowed.
The food then moves through a digestive path into the stomach, and then through the small intestine. At this point, the rabbit absorbs the maximum amount of nutrients it can — however, the food has not been broken down enough to release all the nutrients.
Here, during a process called fermentation, bacteria break down the plant further and this enables the release of even more nutrients. However, after the small intestine, the rabbit cannot absorb nutrients, so the caecotrophs enter the colon and are then eliminated, despite being full of vitamins.
Therefore, when your rabbit eats their faeces — or caecotrophs — they pass through the digestive system for a second time.
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