Quote:
Originally Posted by Ria P
The habitat and substrate depth sounds great to me and he's a lucky and very cute hamster.
I have a couple of hamsters who monkey bar but i never connected it with stress. One seemed to enjoy it and did one paw turns before she took ill but i had to adjust her habitat slightly so she couldn't fall onto something hard or edgy. I wished she was still fit enough to monkey bar and i'm sure she wished the same.
The other is a Syrian and monkey barred towards me to get my attention when i sat at my desk. Again, i didn't see it as a stress behaviour but more as a purpose. He doesn't like to wait for his out of cage time and communicates that by showing behaviours. He would dangle and drop so i had to attach a boredom breaker mat to the ceiling of his cage to stop him in his tracks.
That probably wouldn't work in an aquarium because it would compromise the ventilation unless you attach it in a hammocklike fashion.
I found that adding interesting things to the ceiling took his mind of monkey barring plus they caused an obstruction. He currently has a rat sputnik with a ladder leading up to it.
Sometimes they grow out of it or get bored with it and move on to something else. Ours hasn't monkey barred in months and likes his out of cage time every evening. I set up a hamster playground in the hall and let him run around. If you can hamster proof an area in your house, i'd try that because he could use up a lot of energy by running around and many hamsters like this kind of freedom.
A raised lid would akso solve the problem because he couldn't reach it.
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Thanks for the advice!! It seems since adjusting his enclosure a little, he hasn't been monkey barring anymore which is good! I do really like the idea of introducing a rat sputnik though, I'll see if I can buy one for him.
I'd love to set up an area of the house for him to free roam, unfortunately I'm not sure entirely how to go about doing that. The safest place would be in the same room as his enclosure, but there are a lot of places that would need to be blocked off - The bottom of the wardrobe, my computer desk (Wires!!) - Stuff like that. Any ideas on how to go about hamster proofing the room would be great!