Perhaps I should be begin with a warning... Warning: You will never view rabbits the same way after reading this. Don't read if you want to continue thinking of rabbits as cute, cuddly, perfectly adorable little things or if you have a weak stomach. Ok, you may still think of them as cuddly at the end, but probably not quite so cute.
Fact: Remember the other week when I mentioned how cows deal with cellulose in their diets? Well, the same general problem exists for many rodents, like rabbits and hares. They've got to digest the cellulose in order to get the maximum nutrition from all those plants their munching. However, they don't have the advantage of that extra stomach for fermenting things like cows do. Instead, rabbits deal with the issue by eating their food twice. But not by regurgitating it for rumination, this time. Rabbits eat their own poop. Incidentally, there is a special word for this: coprophagy. Rabbits produce two types of feces--the hard pellets you normally see, plus a softer, lighter, and larger feces that they eat directly off their anus so that it can be digested again. Once it is swallowed, the feces makes its way to the stomach where it's sequestered behind a mucus membrane at one side of the stomach for fermentation. Yup, the poop just sits there in the stomach fermenting for hours before being pooped out for the last time. Just let that idea ferment in your brain for a little as you see all the bunnies appearing in time for Easter.
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