Rabbits are exploited for a wide variety of uses. They are killed for their meat and fur, experimented on, bred for hunting and used as pets. And all this is done, among other reasons, because they are considered to be very docile and manageable animals, as well as having a great reproductive potential. 

Even so, there is a certain sector of the population that discards eating rabbits because of the empathy they arouse in them. Perhaps it is intuited that they suffer being raised and locked up for life, as well as when they are slaughtered in the slaughterhouse?

This reasoning makes a lot of sense. Their behavior clearly shows us this ability to feel. They run away from danger, tremble, play or sleep quietly. These are all signs of their state of mind.

And this is not a matter of subjective appraisals or of "humanizing" these animals. They, like many others, including humans, have a centralized nervous system, which allows them to have experiences, i.e. they can feel what is happening to them. We are not only talking about physical suffering, we are also talking about psychological suffering that often translates into repetitive and self-injurious behaviors. This is the reason why we must take into account how these and other animals are affected by everything we do to them.

We can exclude animals from our plates, our experiments or our clothes. We can also live without using them as toys. And we can also build a different relationship with them and with other animals, without discrimination, without speciesism. A new form of relationship based on respect and consideration.