While bunny and rabbit are used interchangeably, bunny is not a scientific term. Rabbits and bunnies refer to the same animal, with bunnies being the attractive, fluffy infants and rabbits being the fully-grown bunny.
Table of Contents
What is a Bunny?
While it is not a scientific name,” bunny” is another word for a rabbit. Bunnies are frequently considered infants and perceived as attractive, fluffy animals with long ears.
The Easter Bunny is the most well-known bunny. The Easter Bunny is a rabbit that delivers eggs, chocolate, and gifts to kids. However, even before they learn about the word rabbit, children learn the term bunny.
The “y” ending also blends well with other animal nicknames like puppy, kitten, and doggie. It is a simple, child-friendly word to pronounce.
What is a Rabbit?
Rabbits belong to the family Leporidae. The more well-known English Lop, Cottontail, and Lionhead Rabbits are among the many species of rabbits.
Depending on their species’ origins, rabbits can be wild or domesticated. The rabbit is a small mammal, and female rabbits give birth to litters of about five bunnies. Wild animals only survive for one to two years, whereas farmed rabbits can live for eight to ten years.
Rabbits usually come in a wide range of sizes and weights. They may range in height from 8 to 20 inches and weigh between 1 to 5 pounds.
Bunny vs Rabbit: What’s the Difference?
The various factors determining distinct differences between bunny and rabbit are:
Coat
Bunnies don’t have fur when they are born. They often grow fur in a week or so. They get a silky, fluffy coat after 12 days, which makes them quite adorable. It might be a year or a few months before the delicate fur sheds.
They then mature into their sleek adult coats and lose their puffy coats. A newborn bunny’s coat color does not predict what color it will be as a grownup. Many rabbits start with one hue and change to another as they age.
Diet
Baby rabbits or bunnies initially consume their mother’s milk as food. However, the diet of adult rabbits is more diversified. They frequently hunt for many kinds of plants in the wild.
Weeds, blooming plants, pine needles, bushes, and clover are part of a rabbit’s diet. The herbivores nibble on twigs and tree bark to keep their teeth clean.
Name
Kittens, kits, or kitties are the names of newborn rabbits. Although it is not an official name, they are also called bunnies. Coneys, cottontails, and jackrabbits are among other words for rabbits.
A male rabbit is occasionally referred to as a jack or a buck, and the female rabbit is a jill or a doe.
| Bunny | vs | Rabbit |
| Fluffy | Diet | Smooth |
| Milk from Mother | Diet | Seedlings, grass, bark, twigs, and clover |
| Refers to a baby rabbit | Name | Refers to adult bunny. The male is jack or buck, and the female is jill or doe. |
What is the Origin of the Word Bunny?
Initially, the name bunny referred to a young female. However, it began to signify a young or little animal throughout time. Currently, it refers to a rabbit.
As Germans emigrated elsewhere around the globe, they introduced the Easter Hare and Kris Kringle customs associated with the Easter and Christmas holidays. Children would locate a peaceful area of their home the night before Easter and construct a nest out of garments for the Easter hare to deposit eggs.
On its passage over the Atlantic, people abandoned the hare in favor of the cozier, fuzzier word, bunny.
What’s the Origin of the Word Rabbit?
Coneys, a shortening of the Latin word cuniculus, was used for rabbits up to the 18th century. Before the term became widely used, rabbits were initially referred to as coneys’ young.
By the way, that’s where the name Coney Island, the New York amusement park on the ocean, comes from. It’s one of the few still-in-use coney allusions in North America.
Why Did Rabbit Turn Into Bunny?
German immigrants introduced the Easter Hare custom over the Atlantic. A hare is very different from a rabbit. The original narrative goes as follows: On the eve of Easter, kids used to wait for baby hares to visit their houses at night and deposit eggs in the baskets they had woven themselves.
In reality, these baskets were nests constructed from used clothing and baskets. Hares, which are mammals but do not lay eggs, are distinct from rabbits in that they give birth to their young in nests as opposed to burrows.
Easter baskets got their start in this way. Because it was simpler to say, the term “hare” was changed to “bunny,” and because the animal “rabbit,” often called a “bunny,” was more attractive, smaller, and cuter than a hare.
Which Is Bigger – Bunny Or Rabbit?
A rabbit is larger than a bunny if the term “bunny” describes a newborn. Just keep in mind you can use bunny and rabbit interchangeably.
Typically, you will picture cuddly, adorable rabbits when you think of bunnies. In reality, there are many various sizes of rabbits, but some are not fluffy. Bunnies are typically smaller than actual rabbits.
Is a Bunny a Baby Rabbit?
In reality, young bunnies are known as kittens. However, popular culture uses the word “bunny” to describe young rabbits.
If you examine the word’s etymology, ‘bun,’ which means rabbit, or the story of a rabbit in Scottish, could very well be its source. This term may have changed over time to become bunny, which is today used to refer to tiny animals, particularly rabbits.
Rabbits and bunnies are the same species. Popular culture and the influence of Easter has made bunnies to be cute, cuddly, and fluffy. In everyday speech, some individuals claim that bunnies are the offspring of rabbits. Still, rabbit newborns are formally referred to as kittens or kits.
If you enjoyed this post comparing bunnies and rabbits, check out our posts comparing frogs and toads.