Rabbit haemorrhagic disease strains have spread rapidly through wild rabbit populations globally, causing mass mortality. Understanding this disease illuminates both individual animal welfare and ecosystem-level consequences.
RHDV2 causes death by haemorrhage and organ failure within 24-48 hours of infection in the majority of infected rabbits. While death is rapid compared to myxomatosis, the dying process involves respiratory distress, convulsions, and haemorrhage that are acutely distressing. The scale of mortality in outbreak events means millions of individual rabbits suffer this fate simultaneously. Beyond individual welfare, the ecological consequences of rabbit population collapse cascade to predator species that depend on rabbits for survival, affecting the welfare and population viability of Iberian lynx and Spanish imperial eagles. The deliberate spread of earlier RHD strains as biological control agents in Australia created an ethical legacy that now complicates management responses to RHDV2.