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Strange behaviour que. Scanning.

rabswood

Wise Old Thumper
My new free ads bun Mr Snow is different from all my other bunnies. I thought he might be blind but the vet thinks not.

He does this slow scanning movement. Moving his head from side to side, like he's looking to cross the road but in slow motion. This usually happens when I call him. He will do this before coming to me.

He also doesn't do much scampering about like my other bunnies do.

Rabswood
 
He is probably short sighted..strangely I have a bun called Snow in the rescue and he does this too! Red eyed buns tend to suffer from shortsightedness more than other buns
 
Homer my albino does this....ut's quite eery!!! He sits and scans his head from side to side to see what's going on
 
Is he a REW? Lots of them scan. They have poor NEAR vision. Scanning enables them to identify nearish objects as the movement of Buns head makes the object being viewed appear to be moving. It is easier to identify a moving near object than a stationary one when near vision is poor. I THINK the Retina of a lot of REW is not fully functional. Not sure on that bit though!!

Janex
 
My little REW Archie does this. As Jane has said, it is apparently common in these types of buns. (I didn't know anything about it untill the lovely lady who bonded my buns mentioned it, I am glad she did because I would have panicked there was something wrong with him)
 
Thanks everyone I feel re-assured now.

He is such a gorgeous little character.

Does he need any special treatment to help him cope?


For example, when I thought he might be blind I was putting everything in the same place in his run which is only 4x4 and attached to his hutch.

How will he cope when I put him on the lawn, I usually have boxes and tunnels and other bunny stimuli out I also put different things out on different days to keep it interesting for them. Will this make him nervous? would it be best to keep his lawn time with things in the same place?

Rabswood
 
I have a part vision mini dwarf lop who's brown in colour.
He spends ages scanning before he moves anywhere.
Its even more obvious when he's gone somewhere different for the first time. He looks like an old fashioned typewriter.

My advice is try to change things around him, these buns are far cleverer than we give them credit for. They make a mental mapp of their surroundings, so moving something will often upset them.
My Buster has full run of the garden but he tends to stick to one particular area and is not as adventurous as the others.
 
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