How smart are rabbits?

Question

Recently in chat Matt s. posted a link to a short gif

Description

A black and white dutch rabbit goes up to a hurdle with 4 bars, removes the second cross bar up with her mouth and walks through the hurdle, carrying the cross bar. She does not knock any of the other cross bars off. She carries the cross bar to the end of the runway and places it to the side, next to another spare bar laying on the floor.

The problem solving concepts implied here are huge.

1. I don't want to jump over the hurdle, but I have to go straight ahead (there is a person behind the bunny) can I move one of those bars?
2. Ok now I have a bar in my mouth, can I get through here without getting bonked on the head by the rest?
3. I know the person is going to make me run down this runway, again, where can I put this so it is out of the way?

So how much of this is happenstance and how much is reasoning? How smart are rabbits?

Answer 1

You can observe the rabbit's actions, but not its intent. Your interpretation of what happens assumes a lot more intelligence than necessary.

1. We can observe the rabbit removed the bar, but there is not enough evidence to conclude that it did so in order to avoid jumping over the hurdle.

2. Moving through an opening is something that many animals (even insects) can do instinctively and does not imply intelligence.

3. We see the rabbit dropped the bar, but we cannot conclude that it did so with any thought of the future.

Answer 2

There are a lot of people who swear their rabbits are smart as a dog.

Some training methods with rabbits you may know from dogs could flesh out this theory:

Clicker training

The sound of the clicker first will get paired with reward, for example favorite tasteful food. Then one can reward the rabbit with the clicking sound during an exercise and with food after the exercise.

Trick training

Here is the video I assume take place. For example with clicker training you can learn your rabbits actions and tricks. Like trick training by dogs there are very creative tricks.

Agility

Here the focus is more on sports side of the training. But also you can use clicker training to teach the actions.

All above mentioned methods need a good and close relationship between rabbit and owner! The rabbit should not be forced, pushed or punished to bring the actions. species appropriate is only the motivation trough rewards!

Logic games

You can build or buy the same as for dogs. One example is a board with holes. This holes are covered with flaps, caps and pusher gates. You give in some of the favorite food, close them and let your rabbit solve the opening.

Conclusion

Because there are a lot of well documented cases of the above mentioned activities, I follow up the theory, that rabbits could be smart as dogs. (But because they are smaller in most cases and are not predators, they do not act in the same ways like dogs do.)