When it comes to keeping homestead or pet rabbits healthy and happy, it helps to know all about your furry friend.
As such, you may be wondering: How many toes do rabbits have?
Each of our homestead rabbits have a total of 18 toes. Bunnies sport five toes on each front paw and four toes on each back paw!
Read Below To Learn All About Rabbit Paws and Toes!
Facts About Rabbit Toes
Domesticated rabbits have four toes that are actually webbed (we do not recommend pestering your rabbit to observe this).
This webbing affords them an extra pump of power and allows them to run faster when fleeing from predators.
Fun Rabbit Fact: Rabbits can run both plantigrade and digitigrade, to learn what this means, read our post on why rabbits don’t have paw pads!
The five toes on bunny’s front paws may help them forage and eat.
The more digits the better, and the easier to hold yummy veggies, fruits, or grasses close!
Do Bunnies Have Paws or Feet?
There isn’t a great difference between feet and paw as far as we can tell, however, it is common practice that a paw is identified as an often softer, foot-like appendage on animals (usually quadrepods) that grow claws.
A different example of an animal foot that is not a paw would be a hoof, like that we find on Gypsy our hobby farm Jersey milk cow!
Rabbit Toes vs. Hare Toes
Rabbits and hares are closely related, although they do belong to different genera (Oryctolagus and Lepis respectively).
For this reason there are some notable physiological differences between the two.
For example, hares have upright, large ears while rabbits can have floppy or upright ears that are naturally smaller than those of hares.
In addition, hares and rabbits have a different number of toes.
Hares have four toes on each paw, which makes a total of sixteen toes versus rabbits’ eighteen toes.
Identifying Rabbit Tracks
Both bunny and hare tracks look very similar to racoon tracks or even squirrel tracks.
Although if you can see the tracks clearly, raccoons have five toes on each paw that are longer than those of rabbits while squirrels have four toes on each paw that are very thin and long.
Rabbit and hare tracks are usually a rounded mark due to the shortness and roundness of their toes!
Frequently Asked Questions Related To How Many Toes Does A Rabbit Have
Do Hares Have the Same Number of Toes As Rabbits?
Rabbits and hares have a different number of toes. Rabbits have two more toes than hares as their front paws have five toes each while hares only have four.
You may also be interested in learning about Do All Rabbits Have Paw Pads?
Final Thoughts on How Many Toes Do Rabbits Have
There we have it, rabbits and their toes explained!
Be sure to stay tuned to Hobby Farm Heaven for more posts on rabbit paw and nail health as
we share all of our knowledge and best practices with you, such as how to properly clean rabbits’ feet!
You may also be interested in How to keep rabbits’ nails trimmed!