An investigation into how accurately UK rabbit owners identify pain in their pet rabbits

Rabbits are popular family pets. They are prey species and so have evolved to hide signs of illness and pain. Recent research has developed robust pain scales for use in a clinical setting, but to date none has examined rabbit owners’ ability to recognise pain in their animals. This study investigated how owners identify pain in their pet rabbits and their ability to correctly identify different levels of pain, in order to determine any need for owner education in this area. Owners were recruited via Facebook and a two-part online survey was distributed. Part one collected data on demographics, owners’ knowledge of pain signs and beliefs about pain in rabbits. Part two asked respondents to pain score eight videos of rabbits in different levels of pain for comparison to pain scores made by three experts. We used a simplified version of the Bristol Rabbit Pain Score (BRPS) which involved a single 0 to 3 scale. We explored the number of pain signs each respondent could list, the total score given to the videos, and their deviation from the experts’ scores. A total of 500 respondents completed part one of the survey and 345 additionally completed Part two. Respondents were on average able to state five signs of pain (range 0–12), but females stated significantly more (p = 0.018), as did those who worked with rabbits (p = 0.004) and those with experience of their rabbit having an operation (p = 0.01). Overall, 98.6