As prey animals, rabbits are constantly aware of their surroundings, having a wide field of vision and ears with high surface area to detect potential predators. The ears of a rabbit are essential for thermoregulation and contain a high density of blood vessels.
Introduction: The Importance of Thermoregulation for Rabbits Rabbits, beloved for their soft fur and playful antics, face a unique challenge: maintaining a stable body temperature despite lacking sweat glands, a common cooling mechanism in many mammals. How do rabbits regulate body temperature?
The ear lobe plays an important role in thermoregulation of rabbits (Lebas, 1997). Indeed, the ear pinnae contain a complex and dense network of blood vessels and arteriovenous anastomoses that cool the blood through vasodilation (Morris and Bevan, 1984).
Rabbits have no or few sweat glands, complicating the problem of heat dissipation, thereby predisposing the animals to heat stress (HS). Heat stress adversely afect welfare and adaptation, feed consumption and utilization, immunity and health status, growth, repro-duction, and milk production in rabbits. Rabbits are homoeothermic animals.
animals are exposed to higher or lower temperature, the heat dissipation orheat. production must be carried out to maintain its body temperature. Thermoregulation. mechanism is conducted by different. the nasal mucose and the. ear are the important heat dissipation pathways in rabbits.
:format(jpeg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gfrmedia/CKCQI7HLWNE2XBF3RMKBNWVX5Q.JPG "Image result for Rabbits and thermoregulation health")
