Human handling might interfere with conspecific recognition in the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus)

Handled rabbit pups react with decreased fear to human at weaning. We hypot hesized that pups learn species-specific features of their handler. Experim ent 1 showed that handled animals' reactions were similar to both a human a nd their mother. Experiment 2 showed that pups reacted similarly to their m other and other adult rabbits. In Experiment 3, we used nonhandled control pups, and pups in the experimental groups were stimulated by either a human , a cat, or both. Only human-handled animals showed high affinity to approa ch a human at weaning. Similarly, only rabbit pups exposed to a cat did not show fear reaction towards a cat. Nonhandled controls avoided both the cat and the human, and rabbits stimulated by by both species did not avoid any of them at weaning. We demonstrated that handling affected the behavior of weaning rabbits in a selective manner, as they only approached those objec ts frequently to which they had been exposed to. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons , Inc.