Cardboard or rubber: which toy does a rabbit actually destroy? Seven objects compared
Published by Planète Pets · managing editor: Clément Lacaille · how our guides are written
Picking a chew toy for a rabbit often comes down to guesswork: cardboard, rubber, a hay-filled teether all promise to keep the animal busy, but which one actually holds up and which draws the most interest? A Brazilian team compared seven objects over 28 days, in a study published in 2021 in World Rabbit Science (see the study). All our toy comparisons are gathered in the rabbit toys and enrichment section.
Contents · 5 sections
Seven objects, forty-two rabbits, 28 days of observation
Da Silva, Stange and colleagues followed 42 adult New Zealand White rabbits (20 females, 22 males) at the experimental farm of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, split into seven groups: a control with no object, a solid rubber ball, a hay-fillable teether, a perforated cardboard piece, a cat-scratcher offcut, the same offcut infused with catnip, and an articulated cardboard fish. Behavior and the percentage of each object destroyed were recorded over four weeks.
Cardboard goes fast, rubber holds up
Clear result: the articulated cardboard fish shows the highest destruction rate and the lowest durability of every object tested — it does not survive the rabbit’s gnawing appetite for long. At the other end, rubber objects remained more than 50% intact by the end of the trial, with a destruction rate under 30%. In other words, cardboard grabs attention and disappears fast; rubber lasts, but draws less gnawing behavior.
What "destroyed fast" does not mean
An object quickly torn apart is not necessarily a sign the rabbit was bored beforehand, nor proof that this toy is objectively "the best": it is a marker of engagement and gnawing interest, not a direct welfare measure. These results mostly argue for varying materials rather than relying on a single type of object — which is exactly the point of toy rotation. One more caution: a cat-scratcher offcut was not originally designed for rabbits — check for toxic glue or ink, and watch that the animal does not swallow large cardboard pieces.
And what about hay?
The hay-fillable teether did not post the trial’s most spectacular destruction rate, but it combines a manipulable object with the rabbit’s staple food — a point our article on hay versus gnawing sticks also makes: the fastest-destroyed object is not always the most useful day to day.
Frequently asked questions
Does a rabbit that destroys its toys quickly get bored more easily than another?
Not necessarily: the study measures a gnawing preference, not a boredom level. It is more useful to watch whether the rabbit also engages in other behaviors (digging, moving around) than to judge by how fast it wears through one object.
In our shop, for this use: Hanging chew garland for rabbits and rodents (€17.90) · the whole shop
This guide is part of Planète Pets’s Rabbits universe. Our advice is general in nature: for any health concern, your veterinarian remains the only reference.
