Rabbit bleeding apparatus - photo

Rabbit bleeding apparatus. For extracting antiserum.

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Did anybody else read this as "Rabbit Breeding Apparatus" on first glance? For a second there I was thinking that this would be about the most unnecessary device ever invented...

And why do you need to bleed a rabbits ear?

Me too, why do we need a device to bleed rabbits by the ear?

Maybe the rabbits were lab animals and they needed to check the blood levels of a research medication?

Rabbit blood is one of the animal models which most closely resembles human blood and is crucial for cancer research. Fitzgerald industries supplies glutaraldehyde-stabilized Rabbit Red Blood Cells for research purposes, which are supplied in a saline solution with sodium azide as a preservative.

Also

Thymoglobulin-Anti-thymocyte globulin (rabbit) injection is used together with other medicines to prevent and treat the body from rejecting a transplanted kidney.

This medicine is an immunosuppressant. When a patient receives an organ transplant, the body's white blood cells will try to get rid of (reject) the transplanted organ. Anti-thymocyte globulin (rabbit) works by preventing the white blood cells from doing this.