Depends on the mite how they get around. Some mites live on wood, hay, or poultry and don't infest mammals but will cause itching that can lead to secondary injury and infection. Some can come from wild rodents being on hay or shavings you then use. I'm not sure how bad the rodent mites infect rabbits. Mites tend to be fairly species specific but like using infested hay and shavings other animals may transfer a mite that can't reproduce on them. I knocked a poultry mite off my gerbils while checking for rat mites. Even the rodent mites don't particularly like living on guinea pigs and south american rodents but they will infest gerbils if there are enough of them to get started. Rat mites are the worst experience in my life. When you kill their food source and they start starving they swarm across the area and any living thing. You can see hundreds of them crawling on your skin and every time they bite they burrow a little. Eventually you are dancing around itching your legs, arms, shoulders.... until you can't stand it anymore and have to flee. Then you spend days with itchy rashes full of lumps that slowly go down to scaly skin. I basically slept in DE and bentonite dust because that was the only form we could find and I was ready for anything. That's a stained mattress cover but well worth it. I put ivermectin on myself once too. I have to get all the dust up off my floors now. I still throw some in the bottom of guinea pig and gerbil cages before bedding despite the revolution treatment everyone got.