Early discrimination of the mother by rabbit pups

Recognition of the mother by altricial neonates is assumed to emerge only once the dam and her young leave the nest and encounter, for the first time, other family units. Knowing that newborn rabbit pups can be easily conditioned with artificial odours, the aim of this study was (1) to measure their discriminative ability between their mother and an alien doe at the same stage of lactation and (2) to compare the behaviour of pups when exposed to cues from the ventral and dorsal body areas of the mother. Rabbit pups were submitted to a two-choice test at 1, 7 and 14 days after birth in a testing apparatus consisting of two chambers (test 1: mother versus empty chamber and test 2: mother versus alien doe) and in two testing situations (pups tested with exposure to either ventral or dorsal body parts of the does). When opposed to an empty chamber, the mother was preferred at all ages and for both ventral and dorsal exposure (P ≤ 0.05), except for the pups tested under the ventrally exposed does on day 1. Olfactory cues as well as thermal cues are probably responsible for this preference. Discrimination between the mother and an alien doe only appeared on day 7 (t = 2.189, P = 0.043) when rabbit pups were tested under the mother (i.e. ventrum). Our results show that the responses of the pups were dependent on the body parts to which they were exposed. Our demonstration also opens the way for further studies by suggesting that pups could recognize their own mother via individual olfactory and/or thermal cues emanating from her ventrum, well before their emergence from the nest.