Life Expectancy:
We’ve probably all seen
the charts that give dogs a lifespan in “human years” it’s an easy way
for us to relate how our dog is compared to us. I’ve often wondered how
old some of our rabbits are in human years. So I created he table below
after some careful analysis.
Rabbit Life Expectancy-
I looked first at life expectancy for both people and rabbits. The general concencus for people is a life expectancy of about 75 years. Of course, there are many factors that contribute to this number, such as where on this planet you live. Finding accurate scientific answers regarding life expectancy of rabbits was a little difficult. So I averaged everything I found and came up with a life expectancy of 10 years.
Basics Behind the Calculation-
I thought
it would be easy at first but ran into some complications. The easy
thing to do would be to divide the 75 year life expectancy of humans by
the 10 years of life expectancy of a rabbit, and say that every one year
of rabbit life would be equal to 7.5 years of human life. That looks
all cute and everything until you say that a 6 month old rabbit which
has reached sexual maturity is equal to a 4 year old human. That's not
going to work.
A rabbit reaches sexual maturity at about 6 months of age. People get to that point around 16 years of age (note: although they have reached sexual maturity, they typically are not yet mature in other ways). So that was my second age a 6 month old rabbits is equal to a 16 year old person. (My first was a 10 year old rabbit is equal to a 75 year old person.
The next step was to fill in the early years. Having both children and rabbits, I started to compare their behavior at various stages. Amazing how much behavior is parallel. After finishing the early years I then evenly spaced out the later years and came up with the table.
Rabbit Age-----------------People Age
1 week-----------------------1 year
2 weeks-----------------------2 years
3 weeks-----------------------4 years
4 weeks-----------------------6 years
2 months----------------------8 years
3 months----------------------10 years
4 months----------------------12 years
5 months----------------------14 years
6 months----------------------16 years
1 year---------------------------21 years
2 years-------------------------27 years
3 years-------------------------33 years
4 years-------------------------39 years
5 years-------------------------45 years
6 years-------------------------51 years
7 years-------------------------57 years
8 years-------------------------63 years
9 years-------------------------69 years
10 years-----------------------75 years
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