SillyGilly
Member
Hello all.
This morning I woke up and spoke to my girls through the cage like always. And just for added socialization I’ll put my fingers through the bars, and stroke their little heads. My girl Benny is always the first to greet me and she loves when I do this! Higgins too! Well, when I was petting my youngest girl, Rouge, she started experimentally biting my finger (she’s about 7-8 weeks old and very curious about the world around her so this is pretty normal behavior for her). She also has never seemed to mind when I do this. However, in the midst she started nibbling me (totally normal), and then she began biting a little TOO hard and then she actually chomped my finger! Drew blood and everything! It took me a while to stop the bleeding but it’s not a deep cut, it hardly hurt either. Surprised me more than anything. I’m very well aware that in situations like biting you are supposed to “squeak” to alert the rattie that they are hurting you. But I neglected to do this before she drew blood...
It didn’t take me long to recover, and I started searching the net for anybody whose had similar experiences. But I’ve never read about anybody whose had a rat that bites and draws blood without exhibiting signs of aggression! It’s that internet surfing that arose the question as to how she’ll react to me behind the bars. So, mostly for the sake of my own curiosity, I tried the approach of physically putting my hands inside the cage just to be sure this wasn’t some mistake she made. She’s really young, after all. Well, she continued to bite me. Though, not aggressively. And she actually drew blood on me quite a few more times... To be honest, they were just little cuts that she was leaving. But even if they didn’t SEEM aggressive, I did NOT pull away so as to let her know that if this was actually just an act of aggression, her tactics would not work to chase me off. The thing is though, that she really doesn’t seem aggressive when she bites. She’s not puffy, and when I squeak she’ll stop immediately, sniff, then bite a different spot of my hand.
This is when I took her out to help her differentiate my hand from food by offering her treats. Of course she’d still bite my hand, and quite a few times too, but she was at least a little more gentle about it…no more blood at least, and I would squeak when it really hurt. I would also pet her ears while she munched on the treats just to show her that my hands are here as her friends, not food. After a bit of this she seemed to calm down and went back to sniffing my hands.
Then I decided to hang out with her on the couch. She was cuddled in my jacket, right next to my armpit, when I suddenly got this overwhelming feeling of anxiety. Like, my brain was telling me she was going to bite me on my axillary artery next. I told myself to calm down and that she wouldn’t do that, and I know just how sensitive rats are to emotions but that’s what made me freak out even more! Next thing I know she hit me a little right where I didn’t want her and I had to put her up. I gave her a treat when I put her up just to associate coming out of the cage with good things, and instead of going for the cheerio she deliberately targeted my fingers before finally taking the treat. But, it was done in a hungry way? Again, no signs of aggression.
It made me really sad. I love my girls so, so much but after getting bit by one of them, and so many times…I don’t know.
Could it be possible that she’s just biting because she’s hungry? Is it possible that my other girls are not letting her eat? None of them are really aggressive to each other and there’s never any fighting. But, she seems to snatch food out of my hands when I give it to her... There’s always plenty of food in their cage. I also don’t want to be so anxious around her. Especially because I really love her. Is there a tactic I could try to stop the biting if it isn’t food related? Is this just something that will simmer with more handling on my part? In case it matters, they were moved to a smaller cage recently on account on a few of our boys dying. We had to trade cages because we wanted to house our remaining boys together, and to do that they needed more space (because they’re bigger). Our girls had the biggest cage, and because they’re so small we figured it wouldn’t affect them, not that their new cage is TOO small either. We originally had three big boys in there and they all got along fine, all of them are super healthy.
If anyone could help me I would be more than grateful. Advice or shared experiences is appreciated too. I suffer from pretty bad anxiety and my rats are supposed to be what get me through it, and for the most part they’ve helped me greatly. This is my first time dealing with something like this. Thank you in advance.
This morning I woke up and spoke to my girls through the cage like always. And just for added socialization I’ll put my fingers through the bars, and stroke their little heads. My girl Benny is always the first to greet me and she loves when I do this! Higgins too! Well, when I was petting my youngest girl, Rouge, she started experimentally biting my finger (she’s about 7-8 weeks old and very curious about the world around her so this is pretty normal behavior for her). She also has never seemed to mind when I do this. However, in the midst she started nibbling me (totally normal), and then she began biting a little TOO hard and then she actually chomped my finger! Drew blood and everything! It took me a while to stop the bleeding but it’s not a deep cut, it hardly hurt either. Surprised me more than anything. I’m very well aware that in situations like biting you are supposed to “squeak” to alert the rattie that they are hurting you. But I neglected to do this before she drew blood...
It didn’t take me long to recover, and I started searching the net for anybody whose had similar experiences. But I’ve never read about anybody whose had a rat that bites and draws blood without exhibiting signs of aggression! It’s that internet surfing that arose the question as to how she’ll react to me behind the bars. So, mostly for the sake of my own curiosity, I tried the approach of physically putting my hands inside the cage just to be sure this wasn’t some mistake she made. She’s really young, after all. Well, she continued to bite me. Though, not aggressively. And she actually drew blood on me quite a few more times... To be honest, they were just little cuts that she was leaving. But even if they didn’t SEEM aggressive, I did NOT pull away so as to let her know that if this was actually just an act of aggression, her tactics would not work to chase me off. The thing is though, that she really doesn’t seem aggressive when she bites. She’s not puffy, and when I squeak she’ll stop immediately, sniff, then bite a different spot of my hand.
This is when I took her out to help her differentiate my hand from food by offering her treats. Of course she’d still bite my hand, and quite a few times too, but she was at least a little more gentle about it…no more blood at least, and I would squeak when it really hurt. I would also pet her ears while she munched on the treats just to show her that my hands are here as her friends, not food. After a bit of this she seemed to calm down and went back to sniffing my hands.
Then I decided to hang out with her on the couch. She was cuddled in my jacket, right next to my armpit, when I suddenly got this overwhelming feeling of anxiety. Like, my brain was telling me she was going to bite me on my axillary artery next. I told myself to calm down and that she wouldn’t do that, and I know just how sensitive rats are to emotions but that’s what made me freak out even more! Next thing I know she hit me a little right where I didn’t want her and I had to put her up. I gave her a treat when I put her up just to associate coming out of the cage with good things, and instead of going for the cheerio she deliberately targeted my fingers before finally taking the treat. But, it was done in a hungry way? Again, no signs of aggression.
It made me really sad. I love my girls so, so much but after getting bit by one of them, and so many times…I don’t know.
Could it be possible that she’s just biting because she’s hungry? Is it possible that my other girls are not letting her eat? None of them are really aggressive to each other and there’s never any fighting. But, she seems to snatch food out of my hands when I give it to her... There’s always plenty of food in their cage. I also don’t want to be so anxious around her. Especially because I really love her. Is there a tactic I could try to stop the biting if it isn’t food related? Is this just something that will simmer with more handling on my part? In case it matters, they were moved to a smaller cage recently on account on a few of our boys dying. We had to trade cages because we wanted to house our remaining boys together, and to do that they needed more space (because they’re bigger). Our girls had the biggest cage, and because they’re so small we figured it wouldn’t affect them, not that their new cage is TOO small either. We originally had three big boys in there and they all got along fine, all of them are super healthy.
If anyone could help me I would be more than grateful. Advice or shared experiences is appreciated too. I suffer from pretty bad anxiety and my rats are supposed to be what get me through it, and for the most part they’ve helped me greatly. This is my first time dealing with something like this. Thank you in advance.
