#ARE BUNNIES NOCTURNAL SKIN#

It is also extremely unpleasant and painful, causing eye reddening, swelling, ulceration, even blindness, or skin cracking and bleeding. The Draize test is used to measure irritation or corrosion caused to the eye or skin, but it is notoriously unreliable, producing highly variable results. The restraint stops the animals from pawing at their eyes or back to relieve the discomfort and so interfere with the experiment.

#ARE BUNNIES NOCTURNAL FULL#

Developed in the 1940s, these tests involve holding rabbits in full body restraints so that chemicals can be dripped in their eye or spread on their shaved and scraped skin. Over the years, rabbits have most often been used in the Draize Eye and Skin tests. They can also suffer sore and damaged feet from standing in metal caging, and even self-mutilate to relieve their anxiety. These can all cause these sensitive animals to become stressed, which in turn can weaken their immune system, making them prone to illness. Their senses are also overloaded with constant, bright artificial lighting from which there is no escape, and incessant noise such as the clanging of metal cages and loud music blaring from radios. Often housed in isolation, in bare, wire cages without sufficient space or environmental enrichment, rabbits are prone to loneliness and boredom. Life in the laboratory is a world away from this natural environment. Help by signing our pledge to Be Cruelty-Free. They also have an acute sense of hearing which they rely on to sense predators. Being suited to an essentially nocturnal existence makes rabbits extremely sensitive to light.

They are shy and sensitive creatures who mostly rest in the underground darkness during the day and forage at night. In the wild, rabbits live in burrows in large communities. Like so many animals condemned to a life in the laboratory, rabbits used in experiments are denied the ability to express many of their natural behaviours. Rabbits are still widely used in eye and skin tests for consumer products and, alongside guinea pigs, rats and mice, endure untold suffering for the beauty industry. The rabbit has become synonymous with cosmetics animal testing the world over and the image most often used on cruelty-free labelling.

Are bunnies nocturnal