In the wake of the video I posted of my feral chicken, I had a couple of Animal Intelligence readers send me other chicken videos. First up is this video of two rabbits who are apparently fighting (I can’t tell — I don’t know much about rabbit behavior), only to be separated by two chickens:
What in the world is happening here? Are the rabbits fighting? What prompts the chickens to interfere? This isn’t behavior I have ever seen before.
This video is mind blowing… those chickens really seem like bouncers.
I had a couple of rabbits as pets when I was younger and my opinion is that these 2 rabbits were definitely fighting. Rabbits don’t play-fight like predatorial animals like cats do, and it doesn’t look like mating behavior either.
Very intriguing. On watching it a couple of times what I think of is that the roosters, being notorious scrappers themselves, are automatically drawn to the conflict. They really do seem to be barnyard cops here but I think that it has a lot to do with their desire to show the rabbits who is in charge. Odd that the roosters do it as a team, too.
Those are not roosters, Mike. Those are hens, and as some who owns chickens, it is not just a natural rooster instinct to break up a fight. My hens have done the same to other hens/roosters while they fought. I have 4 roosters and 13 hens, they all fight with each other on occasion and will break each others fights up if they get too rowdy
Roosters are much bigger than that, they have big red combs and long wattles (the fleshy bit under their beaks) and big full tails. Of which neither of those HENS have.
Roosters are not the only ones with a natural instinct to fight, they just fight each other more often for dominance reasons. However if one rooster recognizes that another is dominant, he really doesn’t fight back. I have two rhode island reds, and you can clearly tell the dominant one, as he chases the other one around the yard while the other one runs away clucking very nervously
Interesting to watch the rabbits freeze, which we know they do , the effect on the chickens is to subdue them and they lose the stimulus which Mike reasonably describes.
1: The Rabbits seem to fight which activates the chickens natural tendancies..
2: The Chickens rush in for the fight..
3: This activates the Rabbits natural tendancies to freeze..
4: The Chickens get bored, or even quite possibly forget why they are stood there in the first place and thus walk off.
Seems logical.
Chickens naturally do this, hens and roosters. I don’t think they like fighting, i’ve seen my hens rush to the aid of their fellow hens when a rooster or another hen is picking on them. They are defensive creatures
wonder why animals break up other animal fights? Is it a dominance thing?
And why do they just leave after the fight is over?