Many aspects of their physiology and behaviour are also odd compared to what we’re more familiar with. Get this: when baby rabbits suckle, the milk is ejected in one big squirt that only occurs after the mother has been sufficiently stimulated by the paddling action of the babies’ paws. Male rabbits also squirt, but this time the liquid is urine, and it gets squirted over potential mates. As is reasonably well known, lagomorphs practice refection – that is, they have to ‘rescue’ nutrients from their digested food by ingesting their own caecal pellets (they therefore only produce dry droppings once the food has been through the system twice). And lagomorphs are also odd in practicing so-called absentee care, with mother rabbits spending just 0.1% of their time with their young.

I can think of a few bunnies who are definitely stimulated by paddling action.