As a veterinarian who works only with rabbits and other exotic pets, I see rabbits with behavior issues all the time. So when I read Mary Cvetan’s recent blog post about Mad Hatter, the rabbit that’s driving his family crazy by thumping all the time, I rushed to my computer to give some tried and true advice.
Yes, rabbits thump as a warning sign to other rabbits or when they are unhappy with something, and it seems that his caretakers have clearly pinpointed instances when his thumping indicates he is unhappy – with being in his cage alone, when he wants to be with Sarah and she’s not there, when he wants someone to hold up the watermelon for him to eat. The more that family members respond to his demands, the more that he will continue to thump. Remember, people and animals continue to perform behaviors for 2 reasons, generally – to get something good or to avoid something bad. They continue performing behaviors that accomplish these things for them. So, Mad Hatter continues to thump when he gets watermelon on a plate because he knows if he does, someone will find it annoying enough to come over and hold it up to his mouth to make him stop thumping. And he will continue to flip his dinner plate over and over until someone comes over and keeps righting it, because he sees that thumping leads to attention; he thumps and a person comes over to pay attention to him and his plate. The first thing to do is to stop reinforcing the thumping; ignore it. If it doesn’t accomplish what he wants (usually some form of attention), he will have no reason to continue to do it. And if his caretakers find it annoying that he flips his plate over, then they should stop feeding him on a plate. They see that if they don’t come racing over when he flips his plate and starts thumping, eventually he stops and eats a little. He won’t starve himself.
In veterinary medicine, vets routinely apply the principles of applied behavior analysis – based on positive reinforcement of good, acceptable behaviors – to make behavior changes. We use the “ABC” method: “A” is for antecedent (what’s going on before the behavior occurs), “B” is for behavior (in this case, thumping), and “C” is for consequences (what occurs after the behavior). With the dinner on the plate example, Mad Hatter sees dinner is on a plate (the “A” for antecedent – what occurs before the thumping behavior), so he thumps (the “B” for behavior), and as a result, the caretaker comes over to Mad Hatter and puts the food back on the plate (the “C” for consequences, thereby giving Mad Hatter the attention he was seeking and reinforcing the thumping behavior). Thus, as a result, Mad Hatter will likely continue to thump, because it achieves what he wants – attention from his caretakers.
The goal with changing animal behavior is not to punish what we humans perceive as bad, unacceptable behavior (thumping), which may actually be appropriate rabbit behavior (he’s doing what rabbits do when they want to draw attention to themselves). Rather, we want to reinforce, or encourage, good (more socially acceptable in terms of human standards) behavior. Punishment, such spraying a pet with water when he thumps, just leads to fear on the part of the pet and destroys the human-animal bond. So, in the case of Mad Hatter, maybe there is some other less unacceptable behavior that he does naturally now besides thumping (such as tearing up paper in his cage, if he does this on his own) that his caretakers can encourage him to do instead of thumping, so that he can still express his displeasure about something but in a less annoying way. The idea would be to provide him with paper in his cage (changing the environment, or antecedent to the behavior) before he thumps and then reinforce the paper shredding (with lots of praise or a favorite food treat when he does it). That way, he can still express his displeasure about something but in a more acceptable way.
Animals have opinions, too, and they should be allowed to express them. Otherwise, they, like we, feel they have no control over their worlds. We just need to work with them so that their often natural behavior fits into our world.
Photo credit: neatorama.com
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