Domestic rabbit
domesticated form of the European rabbit
The domestic rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus) is the domesticated form and subspecies of the European rabbit. There are hundreds of rabbit breeds originating from all over the world. Rabbits were first domesticated and used for food and fur by the Romans. Rabbits may be housed inside, but the idea of the domestic rabbit as a house companion, a so-called house rabbit (similar to a house cat), was only strongly promoted starting with publications in the 1980s. Rabbits can be trained to use a litter box and taught to come when called, but require exercise and can damage a house or injure themselves if it has not been suitably prepared, based on their innate need to chew. Accidental interactions between pet rabbits and wild rabbits, while seemingly harmless, have been strongly discouraged due to the species' different temperaments as well as wild rabbits potentially carrying diseases.
Unwanted pet rabbits sometimes end up in animal shelters, especially after the Easter season. In 2017, they were the United States' third most abandoned pet. Some of them go on to be adopted and become family pets in various forms. Because their wild counterparts have become invasive in Australia, pet rabbits are banned in the state of Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Domestic rabbit” is domesticated form of the European rabbit. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Domestic, rabbit and domesticated, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q149017. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Domestic rabbit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.