What does Rabbit Poop Look Like? Are they Toxic to Dogs?

Dogs appear compelled to eat the grossest and strangest things they can discover at times. Anything from cigarette butts to diapers to ant traps can fall into this category. But today, we’re going to discuss a peculiar preference: some dogs enjoy eating rabbit dung.

Dogs consume rabbit feces for various reasons, which we’ll go over later. Don’t be alarmed; this is a fairly typical occurrence that rarely results in serious disease.

However, it might make your dog feel horrible in other situations, and you’ll want to do everything you can to stop it since it’s gross.

Continue reading to learn more about this odd problem and what you can do about it.

Dogs Eat Rabbit Poop for a Reason

While rabbit dung can cause disease in dogs, it rarely causes them to become unwell or cause major health concerns.

You can do a few things to keep your dog from eating rabbit excrement, which we’ll go over with you.

What Causes Dogs to Eat Rabbit Poop?

We can never know why dogs do what they do, as with any inquiry about their motivations. However, we may be quite certain that rabbit poop-eating behavior is common for one of the following reasons:

Curiosity.

Humans like to explore the world through sight, whereas dogs prefer to use their senses of taste and scent. As a result, they take a bite when they come upon a small clump of rabbit feces.

Deficiencies in nutrition

Some nutritional shortages can cause dogs to eat unusual things to get the nutrients. Rabbit excrement, for example, is generally high in fiber and B-complex vitamins.

Pica.

Pica is a condition in which dogs eat inedible substances (or mostly inedible). Medical issues can contribute to this, but compulsive disorders can also play a role.

Hunger.

A hungry dog will try almost anything that smells slightly like food, and some dogs enjoy the taste.

Of course, while it’s not a very satisfying explanation, it’s important to remember that dogs, like their humans, do strange things (hopefully, your abnormal behaviors don’t include scavenging rabbit excrement from the yard).

A dog is eating rabbit dung.

Is it Safe for Dogs to Eat Rabbit Poop?

Dogs are generally unaffected by rabbit excrement. We should, however, do everything we can to keep children from consuming it.

Finally, feces could be a food supply for germs and other microscopic pathogens that could make your dog sick.

Your dog’s drool gets all over you and everything you own on a normal day, so it only makes sense to keep poop out of his mouth.

However, rabbit poop is unlikely to make your dog sick. Most parasites and diseases discovered in rabbit feces are species-specific and cannot infect dogs.

Dogs that consume rabbit dung, for example, are frequently discovered to have coccidia (a sort of single-celled parasite) in their feces. But, on the other hand, these coccidia organisms are completely safe for your dog and will pass through his system.

Even though rabbit feces is usually harmless to dogs, you should immediately consult your veterinarian if:

When your dog consumes rabbit excrement, he starts vomiting. When your dog eats rabbit excrement, he develops diarrhea. Rabbits may still pose a threat to your canine companion. While rabbit feces may not pose a major threat to your dog, the rabbit itself may be harmful.

Rabbits will not fight your dog, but if your dog catches and eats a rabbit, he may become sick with tapeworms. Rabbits also carry fleas and ticks, some of which can transmit tularemia or, even worse, the bubonic plague (yup, that plague).

So, if your dog has a habit of eating rabbit excrement, or if you have a lot of bunnies on your property, you’ll want to do everything you can to keep your pet safe.

This involves using a decent flea preventative (ideally one that also works on ticks) and keeping a close eye on your dog while running about in the backyard.

Wait, how do I tell the difference between rabbit poop and other droppings?

You might not know how to identify rabbit feces or separate it from the droppings of other animals unless you’re a seasoned wildlife tracker or have kept bunnies as pets. But don’t worry, it’s not difficult to pick up.

First, it’s vital to understand that rabbits generate two distinct sorts of “number twos.”

Each dropping is roughly the size of a pea and is more or less spherical. They are primarily brownish, but grass, hay, or other plant material may be present. These feces are usually deposited in little mounds around the rabbit’s territory.

Cecotropes are the second sort of droppings produced by rabbits. Cecotropes are pellets made up of partially digested food produced by the cecum (a section of the large intestine). They appear many hours after the rabbit consumes food, usually at night.

Cecotropes are smaller than conventional feces (in fact, they aren’t feces), and they’re frequently lumped together into a single mass. They also have a distinct pungent odor, whereas regular rabbit feces has only a faint smell.

This raises the obvious question of why bunnies create two types of excrement.

That’s because rabbits will eat cecotropes to benefit from the undigested food contained within them (and I hope you’re not eating while reading this).

Blech.

On the other hand, Cecotropes aren’t as common as regular rabbit feces because, unless the bunny that generated them was startled or anything, it would devour them before your dog could eat them. It makes no difference if your dog consumes rabbit excrement or cecotropes in canine health.