Dominance humping vs hormonal humping - what's the difference?

[Tweetiepy]

I know there is a difference in the intention of this act but is there a difference in the way it is done? What I mean is: are there male bunny bits exposed when they do dominance humping? The reason I ask is that the vet said that the humping was often a dominance thing - although I've never seen this kind of behaviour with Peaches since he's an only bunny - do they dominance hump humans or just other bunnies? Also, when they dominance hump, do they make the grunting noise too? I've only seen Peaches do his love dance and then the "regular hormonal" humping - the kind with his bits exposed - BTW that thing bends at strange angles!

 

[OakRidgeRabbits]

This depends a lot on the individual rabbit, but generally dominance humping is the same or similar to the action of actually breeding a doe.

 

[Tweetiepy]

But haven't I heard that they sometimes do this to the head of the bunny?

 

[elrohwen]

Bunnies often hump the head, but I think it's more about being confused and overeager than anything else. I know head humping is common with dominance humping and I think it also happens frequently in mating.

There are also theories that bunnies hump for other reasons, besides just dominance and mating. I have seen one of my bunnies, a very submissive bunny, go through a humping stage with his very dominant partner (weeks after they were bonded) that I believe was caused by stress, as one example. So I don't think it's always so cut and dry either, at least in the case of speutered bonded pairs. With unfixed bunnies it's certainly much more hormonally driven.

eta: I have also never heard of a bunny dominance humping a human. Not to say it doesn't ever happen and I just haven't heard of it, but I have only heard of bunnies humping humans when they are hormonal and unfixed, then stopping after being fixed. If they did it out of dominance, I would imagine it would be quite common for bunnies of both genders to hump humans long after being fixed, but they don't in the majority of cases. Humping other bunnies is another story.

 

[OakRidgeRabbits]

Tweetiepy wrote:

But haven't I heard that they sometimes do this to the head of the bunny?

Yes. This happens during both dominance humping and breeding.