I have learned that with creatures one loves, suffering is not the only thing for which one may pity them. A rabbit who does not know when a gift has made him safe is poorer than a slug, even though he may think otherwise himself.
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Adams on Animal Perception
Creatures that have neither clocks nor books are alive to all manner of knowledge about time and the weather; and about direction too, as we know from their extraordinary migratory and homing journeys. The changes in the warmth and dampness of the soil, the falling of the sunlight patches, the altering movement of the beans in the light wind, the direction and strength of the air currents along the ground – all these were perceived by the rabbit awake.
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Adams on Winter
Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship ... For rabbits, winter remains what it was for men in the middle ages – hard, but bearable by the resourceful and not altogether without compensations.