HAMPSHIRE wildlife expert Chris Packham has urged rabbit owners to bin their hutches and let the animals live more comfortably.

The naturalist said outdated practices were stifling the animal's social life.

He also revealed that he ate tadpoles as a child - and told the Hay literary festival they should do the same.

Speaking yesterday, he said: "We don't revise our ideas about animal husbandry quick enough. Rabbits are kept in hutches because we were growing them for food, not keeping them as pets.

"So if you're not going to eat your rabbit, why not give it a better quality of life and not cram it into a hutch? It is not an ideal place, they need a place to run around.

"They are also highly social animals, they don't really enjoy being on their own.

"Just because they are rabbits doesn't mean we ought to neglect their welfare and focus on cats and dogs. We've changed the way we keep cats and dogs ... well, dogs anyway. We don't allow them to foul the streets, some of us don't allow them to disturb ground-nesting birds."

Packham was at Hay to discuss his new memoir, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar, which chronicles how he came to love the natural world.

A formative experience was eating tadpoles as a boy, he said.

"They taste sort of gritty and they're difficult to bite because they slip on the tongue," he said. "The reason they are slightly moreish is because they are quite difficult to taste."

He added: “All I can say is read the book and then next year get a small spoon and a jar and sacrifice one or two, because if it will instil within you a passion for life that lasts as long as mine has, then forfeiting the lives of a couple of amphibians, which are selectively bred in huge numbers, is not going to be a bad thing to do.”