Ultimately the problem with punishment is that it has to a) be more deterring than whatever reward they’re attaining through their behaviour, and b) not be associated with a discriminative stimulus. Also c) punishment prohibits a behaviour but it doesn’t provide an alternative acceptable behaviour.
Delilah came to me badly neglected, and would rattle the bars of her cage for HOURS at a time, incessantly. Or dig at the floor of her cage. Or thump her foot. For HOURS. It was horrible. We too tried water bottle spraying.
But ultimately, as Mz_Mala noted, it’s a bid for attention. Delilah spent much of the first year of her life trapped in a tiny rabbit cage with little to no interaction from people, and so she began to solicit interaction however she could. Justabox, you may think you haven’t conditioned your bun to associate rattling with attention, but in fact you have. When he rattles the bars, you inevitably come over to tell him to stop. That’s attention. And for Delilah, being yelled at was still better than being alone. Like a small kid acting out, negative attention is better than no attention at all. Should you bun be having the same lonely mindset as Delilah, your punishment isn’t working because it’s not punishment, it’s a reward.
Delilah’s previous owner’s solution was to move her cage to the basement where she wouldn’t bother anybody, isolating her further. Please don’t do that.
Being both a bid for attention and also a boredom behaviour, by the time I got her it had developed fully into stereotypy, and even after I had her integrated with Lahi and Picca, in a huge 4x8 enclosure, she would sometimes spend hours at a time, rattling the bars of her cage.
Rattling the bars of the cage that was sitting there with the door wide open, as she stood OUTSIDE the cage. It wasn’t about wanting out anymore, or wanting attention, it was simply something she did when she had nothing else to do, almost compulsively.
Today she doesn’t rattle the bars of her cage, mostly because she doesn’t HAVE a cage. She and Lahi have the spare room of the apartment to themselves, and their main living space is a condo made from a storage cabinet. The wire mesh of the doors is a chicken wire dense enough that she can’t get her mouth around a bar without the wire pushing at her nose, so it’s not pleasant for her to try and bite it. She still digs in the litter box sometimes, and will chew on the metal hinge of one of the doors—again, she’s developed a compulsive behaviour and probably isn’t going to stop for anything. But it’s not nearly as loud, and as she can get all the attention she wants any time she wants from Lahi, and she can run around the condo or come out and run around the room anytime she wants, she does it only rarely.
That might not be an option for you, but do consider that a bun’s most active hours are dawn and dusk, which for mine seemed to be from 9pm-2am ish, and then 5am-8am ish. Right as you’re trying to go to bed, your bun is AWAKE AWAKE TIME TO EXPLORE!!
So really keep in mind boredom causes. If he has nothing else to do in his cage, he’s going to find something to do. I found the EcoTrition Snack Shak really helped, it’s not exactly healthy but it’s tasty enough that they like chewing on it, and it lasts a good long time. Mind you them chewing on that is ALSO very loud, but not as disruptive and rather easier to sleep through.
Finally, allow me to explain discriminative stimulus. Essentially the issue with punishment is that you run the risk of making yourself a condition for when the behaviour is or is not allowed. Dogs, for instance, are highly oriented toward context. You can tell a dog they’re not allowed on the bed, but as far as they’re concerned they’re only punished for being on the bed when you’re there, therefore they’re only not allowed on the bed when you’re there. They don’t have the ability to generalize the punishment to mean all situations, not just the one they receive the punishment in. And so people seem convinced that their dogs are “disobedient”, and “defy” them by being “sneaky” and trying to do things when they’re not looking.
No, it’s simply that you looking and being present is the dog’s understanding for when they should and shouldn’t do the behaviour.
Rabbits definitely do have a better ability than dogs to generalize what they learn, from what I’ve observed. But they still tend to make punishment into discriminative stimulus. Delilah has a quirk of, instead of grooming Lahi, grabbing his fur in chunks and ripping it out! Don’t ask me why. I’m writing it off as neurotic behaviour stemming from neglect during her formative months.
The problem when I tried to punish her for it: every time I caught her doing it, I would give her a little flick on the nose, or poke her bum. The result: to this day, Delilah only yanks Lahi’s fur out when I’m not around.
Rattling the bars is the same thing: if you have to be present to administer the punishment, you’re only punishing rattling the bars:while human is in the room.
Mz_Mala has taught her bunny that the presence of the spray bottle means he shouldn’t do the thing. She hasn’t taught him that he shouldn’t do the thing at all.
And that’s why punishment is so hard. Punishment can’t be seen to come from an external, occasional condition in order to effectively suppress the behaviour. It must be seen as a consequence of the behaviour itself. My sister’s horse kept trying to bite my dad, so he’d smack him on the nose with his glove. Soon Ben was biting my dad and then immediately jerking his head away in anticipation of the smack. Only problem was, Ben is so tall that when he jerked his head up, he smacked it himself on the ceiling. Because that punishment happened every time, without obviously coming from anyone in particular, the biting stopped. However, Ben could have learned to only bite people outside, or to bite but then moderate how high he jerked his head, if he’d realized that what was being punished wasn’t the biting but the jerking his head up.
Thankfully Ben is not the brightest bulb.
Finally, the problem with punishment is that it doesn’t provide acceptable alternative behaviour. Nobody does something “just because”. Behaviours are developed for a reason, and in our pets those “bad behaviours” happen because the animal is getting something from them.
Punishing a dog for growling just creates dogs who “bite without warning”, because you haven’t taught the dog how to acceptably express their discomfort and fear. This is why rewards-based, positive training is considered the best for dogs.
Even as I was punishing Delilah for trying to yank Lahi’s fur out, I was also trying to reward her for grooming him properly, by petting her when she licked nicely to make it a groom-session. I’m not sure how much it actually worked as a reward, but I like to think she does actually groom him properly more often than not.
But in a different example, Delilah used to rush my legs for food, and completely crowd me. So I started shoving her into her hidey box, and only putting the food bowl down when she stayed inside. Very quickly, instead of rushing my legs, when she was excited for food she’d make a beeline for the box. That’s called “reinforcement of alternative incompatible behaviour”. She couldn’t rush my feet AND stay in the box.
Hope you enjoyed this short psychology lecture, good luck figuring out how to apply it. Essentially, you must: figure out what reward your bun is achieving through his behaviour, then see if you can remove that reward. I’m willing to bet that your attention, even though it’s negative, is the reward, both for social gratification of a bun housed by himself and for mental stimulation of a bun without much else to do. Then, you must provide him with acceptable alternatives to the behaviour, such as the cardboard Blue eyes mentioned. You can also address his motivations for the behaviour by giving him more space and toys, and make the behaviour impossible by making his housing something that doesn’t have bars.
