Thus, while the rabbit endogenously is a nocturnally active animal, external noise or scheduled feeding during the light period can turn it to a predominantly diurnal animal. Leaving a light on for your rabbit may seem like a helpful idea as rabbits are neither nocturnal nor diurnal creatures. Rabbits are crepuscular, not nocturnal, so their most active times are during dawn and dusk. In the absence of any other zeitgeber RF in fact did entrain the free-running circadian rhythms and, thus, is zeitgeber for the circadian oscillator system of the rabbit. Rabbits are crepuscular, which means they are more active during dawn and dusk. While both wild and domesticated rabbits are crepuscular animals, their daily schedule and activity differ to some extent. When food access was restricted to 4/12 h of the light period, most events of the five behavioral functions were concentrated around the time of restricted food access (RF), the rabbits now being almost exclusively light active. In constant light conditions of 7 lux either function free-ran with a circadian period-length greater than 24 h, which, too, is typically in nocturnally active animals. This is likely because their predators are mostly nocturnal animals, so being active during those times helps them avoid getting caught. In contrast, in a properly sound-isolated laboratory locomotor activity, hard faeces excretion, food intake, water intake and urine excretion were significantly higher during the dark period of a LD 12:12. While rabbits are not nocturnals, they have evolved significantly to survive in the wild and their sleep follows crepuscular rythm, which means they are most active at dawn and dusk. When the hours of external noise coincided with the 12 h light period 8/15 rabbits displayed a predominantly diurnal pattern, in 3/15 rabbits no preference existed for light or dark time and 4/15 animals had a typically nocturnal pattern. In an ordinary, non sound-isolated animal room rabbits exhibited elevated locomotor activity, hard faeces excretion, food intake and water intake during elevated external animal-house noise. Rabbits know about the diurnal predators during. It appears not even clear, whether the rabbit is a predominantly diurnal, crepuscularly active or nocturnal animal. While the crepuscular nature does not help pet rabbits, wild rabbits have developed an anti-predator strategy. Although the rabbit is an almost 'classical' laboratory animal, chronobiological research in this species is in its infancy.
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