Rabbits Eat Their Own Teeth, So If You Have One As A Pet, You Might Be Giving Them Too Much Calcium
When rabbits munch on their food, they may be eating fragments of their own teeth. Just like the teeth of squirrels, beavers, and kangaroos, rabbit teeth grow continuously, so they require large amounts of calcium.
Previously, researchers assumed that wild rabbits ate calcium-rich foods like leafy greens to maintain their growth, but now, a new study has found that this may not be necessary for rabbits to receive the proper minerals.
Rabbits are always chewing and grinding their teeth due to their naturally high-fiber diet, resulting in fine tooth powder that gets reabsorbed into their bodies during digestion, providing them with a steady source of calcium. It is a cycle that continues to fuel the growth of rabbit teeth.
“It has been suggested that rabbits must have high mineral requirements, in particular for calcium,” wrote the researchers of the study.
“However, this assumption ignores the fact that tooth wear represents finely ground tissue that is not lost to the body but swallowed during food processing.”
The researchers conducted a two-week-long experiment on eight female European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) to see whether tooth wear was a source of calcium for rabbits.
They gave food pellets to the rabbits that contained either ground-up rabbit teeth or a standard calcium supplement.
Then, they measured the absorption rate in the body by analyzing the rabbits’ droppings. The results revealed that rabbits can digest and absorb calcium from their own teeth. They can actually extract more calcium from their own teeth than from food.
Samples of their droppings showed that rabbits on the tooth-powder diet digested 33 percent of the calcium they ate. On the other hand, the rabbits that received the standard supplement only digested 20 percent.
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The researchers noted that there was no significant difference in body mass, average water intake, or fecal output between the two groups.
Typically, food for pet rabbits contains calcium because pets cannot choose to eat foods high in calcium themselves.
However, the new findings suggest that pet owners may be giving their rabbits too much calcium.
Healthy rabbits can get rid of excess calcium through their urine, but rabbits with kidney problems may struggle to process calcium properly, which could lead to potential complications. In pet rabbits, urinary tract diseases are common, so their mineral intake should be monitored.
During the experiment, the researchers did not measure tooth loss, meaning that they did not take into account the extra calcium that the rabbits from both groups might have consumed.
Still, the new research is a good foundation for future work, as it demonstrates for the first time ever that rabbits can digest calcium from their own teeth.
The details of the full study were published in The Veterinary Journal.
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