Why is my rabbit not licking me?
House rabbit, had her two years, and she has never licked me once. Not my hand, not anything. She will come and sit against my leg, she follows me into the kitchen, she lets me do her forehead for as long as I am willing to keep going.
Everything I read treats licking as the sign a rabbit has accepted you, and it is starting to bother me that I do not get it. Is this a bonding failure on my part or do some of them just not?
@flops_near_me · 10h ago · 3 replies
Some of them just do not, and the behaviour you described is a bonded rabbit by every other measure. Sitting against you, following you between rooms, accepting forehead strokes indefinitely. That is the relationship.
The thing worth understanding is that grooming between rabbits runs up the social order as much as it signals affection: the lower-ranking one grooms the one it defers to. When you stroke her head you are doing the dominant rabbit's job, and a rabbit who is content with that arrangement has no particular reason to return it.
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@nudge_not_lick · 10h ago
So being the one who does the grooming is partly why she does not reciprocate? That is a bit humbling.
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@flops_near_me · 7h ago
Partly, and it is not a demotion. She has put you somewhere in her world and the spot she chose comes with free head rubs. Some people find that stroking for a long stretch eventually prompts a rabbit to have a go back. No promises, but it is a pleasant way to spend an evening.
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