Animal Directory Featured species in the planned Children's Farm habitat
Mini Rex Rabbit
Oryctolagus cuniculus
LC
Fun facts
- Coat is plush, dense, and stands perpendicular to the body — the texture is closer to crushed velvet than to fur, which is why the breed is the most popular show rabbit in North America.
- Adults weigh just 1.4-2.0 kg — about the size of a large guinea pig — and live 7-10 years in good care.
- Comes in nearly 20 recognised colour varieties, from castor brown to broken blue to lilac otter.
- The Rex mutation is recessive and was first observed in a litter of wild-type rabbits in France in 1919; the "mini" line was bred in Texas in the 1980s.
- Domesticated breed; not IUCN-assessed (its wild ancestor, the European rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus, is paradoxically listed as Endangered in its native Iberian range).
From the master plan
The Mini Rex Rabbit is the quiet contact animal of the Children’s Farm — staged in the indoor learning barn at the supervised hold-and-pet station. The velvet coat is the species’ selling point, and keepers use it to talk about selective breeding, animal welfare, and why the wild European rabbit is in trouble even as its domesticated cousins thrive.
No IUCN assessment exists for domestic rabbit breeds. We default to LC for consistency in the schema and call out the domestic-breed status explicitly.