Lop sudden death

Question
QUESTION: my daughter has had her mini pin lop for 1 year now and Saturday it passed away with no warning. he was very healthy and active and loving as a matter of fact she had just put him in his cage an hour prior to his death and was going in to give him a apple when she found him dead. Can you give me any reason at all why he may have passed away so suddenly?

ANSWER: Dear Roma,

I am very sorry about the sudden, tragic loss of your friend.  Unfortunately, without a necropsy including histopathology of major organs, there is no way to confidently discover the cause of death.  This can be done by an experienced rabbit vet, if you should decide to do so.  But it may be too late if the body has not been kept very cold (not frozen).

Sudden death can be caused by trauma, heart attack from congenital problem, pulmonary embolism....the list goes on.  Without knowing more from a post mortem exam, there is simply no way to determine the cause of death.

I am sorry about your loss.

Dana

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: thank you for your fast response, my husband said that he could have been scared to death, our house alarm went off during that hour that my daughter was away from him, do rabbits have heart attacks because of a house alarm going off? it was loud and it did make us all jump we do not know why it went off it was not even activated. I just don't see him dying because of that. He has lived in her room wiht all sorts of music, doors slamming etc. Could the alarm have killed him?

Answer
Dear Roma,

Well, it's not impossible that the stress of the loud alarm could have startled him so badly that he panicked in his cage and gave himself a fatal strike on the head, or even broke his neck.  It is also possible that such a noise, unexplained, could stress him so badly that he was trying to escape his cage, but--unable to do so--he suffered cardiac arrest from the stress and terror.

A rabbit's heart, unlike that of most mammals, does not stretch/enlarge when it has to pump more blood, so it merely beats *faster*.  Once the upper limit is reached, the heart can fibrillate, and death by heart attack will ensue.  It is much "easier" for a rabbit to suffer a heart attack from stress/fear than it is for other animals to do so.

I can't say for sure whether the alarm was the trigger.  I don't know just how loud it was, or how long it went off.  But it's not impossible that this was the cause.  There's just no way to know for sure without having been there to see.

I am very sorry.

Dana