Speaking as someone in the field of animal behaviour:
Generally, attributing motivations to animal behaviour is wrong. "He's doing this because he knows..." is attributing emotions/behaviours like "spite", "deviousness", "maliciousness", "disobedience", "disrespect", and so on, which require a level of mental thinking animals aren't capable of. Cause and effect is especially something that they often can't comprehend to the level we think.
Animals can be very smart, but consider that often animal intelligence is measured in comparison to human development: "as smart as a 4 year old child", for example. So it's almost always best to try and consider animal behaviour in terms of very small children. The younger you go, the less mentally capable they are of making logical leaps. For instance, the reason babies love peek-a-boo so much is that they lack "object permanence"literally they can't conceive of the existence of something they can't see. When you hide your face from a baby, as far as they're concerned you are suddenly gone. 4 year old children don't understand conservation of mass: they will always think a tall thin glass contains more liquid than a short fat glass; they will consider several small pieces to be more than one large piece, and so on. It takes months before babies even comprehend simple cause and effect such as "when I grab something I can bring it closer to me."
So, all the time, people say "my dog knows he's not allowed on the couch, but the moment no ones in the room he immediately disobeys and jumps up onto it!" Etc etc variations of "they wait until I'm not looking to do what they know they shouldn't!!"
Well, no, your dog knows no such thing. They don't understand English. And dogs in particular are awful at generalization. To them, it's all about context. A dog that has been taught many tricks, but only in the kitchen, will often be completely unable to perform in the hallway. Because the commands only mean something to them in the kitchen! So all these dogs know is "this rewarding behaviour is punished when the human is present. Therefore I must only do it when they are not present." "Disobedience" requires a mental level of consideration of cause and effect, and understanding of future possibilities, that dogs don't have. Dogs are all about what behaviours will be rewarded, and in what contexts behaviours will be punished. That's all. If you're commanding come, and there's a squirrel, they chase the squirrel because "human is telling me to come so I willOH MY GOD A SQUIRREL I WILL CATCH YOU SQUIRREL COME HERE SQUIRREL!!", not because they've deliberately weighed their options and decided to disobey. Again; think small children. Often small children with severe ADHD.
For rabbits, their mental quirk is associations: they make incredibly strong positive and negative associations. For instance, bonding two rabbits together is all about creating positive associations. You feed them at the same time where they can see each other, so that they associate the happiness of food. You take them on car rides so that they take comfort from each other. And you never ever let them in a situation where they might harm each other. Once they fight, they may never forgive each other.
But even to say "never forgive each other" is attributing a level of thought they likely don't have. Forgiveness requires understanding of past wrongs, consideration of moving past them, etc etc. More likely, the bunnies just see each other and have a sense of "YOUUUUU!! You are pain/hurt/bad/intruder and I HATE YOU!" And then every time they have an encounter that results in aggressiveness and agitation, that association is strengthened.
So does your bunny resent you for having him neutered? Almost certainly not. But, he's likely in pain, and that makes him unfriendly. His hormones are doing some strange things, so he's acting strangely.
But there could be some associations going on: hands reached for him, and picked him up, and he went to a scary place that ended up hurting a lot, so now he associates hands with bad things. That's a bit of a stretch, and animals rarely have the kind of memory to associate such separate events as "being picked up" and "hours later was in pain". But rabbits as a whole often hate being picked up, because of how scary it is, and if they aren't handled regularly to desensitize them then it can be a huge reaction. There's very little that's positive enough about being picked up to overcome the negative association of fear. Delilah loves being pet, but the moment she feels a hand go under her tummy she knows she's about to be picked up, and often tries to get away.
So it's entirely likely that with his recent medical experience, he's currently associating hands and people with being picked up and being scared more than anything else. And being picked up is even worse when you're in pain, so he's avoiding even the possibility of being picked up.
For sure I'll often make comments about my bunny's behaviour: "Don't touch food to Delilah's mouth or she'll think you're trying to poison her." But that's a shorthand for explaining her behaviour without explaining the cause: when she was spayed, she had to take regular antibiotics. She'd never been handled regularly before, so suddenly she was in pain, and being grabbed and lifted and having things shoved in her face and forced into her mouth and she was being forced to eat something and as a whole it was an extremely traumatic experience.
Just like being handled, being medicated is something that is scary but, as it doesn't actually hurt, repeated exposure to the scary experience without a result of pain results in desensitization. But, just as Delilah was starting to get used to it, the antibiotics were done, so she never got over her negative association. She wasn't medicated again until she came down with GI stasis, when she was in pain and scared etc etc, when not only was I forcing critical care down her throat, but also regular hay, water, food, constantly trying to get her to eat. So Delilah now has an extremely strong association between something being shoved in front of her mouth, and feelings of fear and pain. Thus, she makes a convincing show of being offered poison.
To take that series of events further, she behaves the same way when faced with a banana. Weird, since most bunnies love banana, but if you offer a piece of banana to Delilah she recoils as though it were toxic. Sure enough, the vet confirmed that some of their antibiotics are banana flavoured.
Does Delilah remember her spay procedure from 5 years ago? Surely not. But the experience was so negative that sensations that were associated with the experiencehaving things shoved in front of her mouth, the taste of bananaare all branded as BAD NO DO NOT WANT in her mind.
In this case, some patience and judicious application of treats will soon have him thinking positively of you again. Also I'd like to stress, when it comes to negative associations: breaking them just requires them encountering the situation enough times without anything bad happening. I've started picking Lahi and Delilah up once a day, and making them eat food from my hand while held. Delilah is a harder nut to crack, but Lahi now knows that if I'm holding him, which he hates, and I put food in front of his face, he needs to eat some of it in order to be put down. Being held is more negative than food is positive, so they can't come to enjoy being held by being rewarded with food. However, the removal of a negative stimulus is called negative reinforcement, and is a type of reward. "Get put down" as a reward for "eat this food" means now that Lahi is used to eating while being held, and next time he comes down with GI stasis it won't be such a hassle to encourage him to eat.
So what I'm saying is that he may currently be avoiding you due to an association with being handled, so you'll want to hold off on that for a while... but you also want to get him used to being handled while he's healthy, so that it won't be so traumatic and difficult when he's not. If you only handle him when there's trouble/he's potentially sick/hurt/etc, being handled will continue to be strengthened as a bad thing.
We assume he's put it all together now. Frankly I've felt a bit guilty about it and I know intellectually that it's a good thing for him and for us, and for us all together, to be neutered in the long run. Not to mention hopefully getting him bonded with a buddy.
