Chewing issue

[Quicksilver]

Hi. Currently in process of taming are adopted female syrian hamster Tali, has been with us since early May (about 6 weeks). Tali loves chewing a lot!, seems to chew to get our attention to come out (lives in Savic Plaza playtime is every evening for about 30 minutes or longer - play pen is about twice the size of her cage. Our concern is Tali can get very obsessed with chewing corners of playpen more than her toys. We interact with her and she does follow our hands to distract her plus trying to bond more with her. We hope she is happy as some evenings we worry she might not be due to excessive fixation on corners to chew. Most of her toys are natural/chewable and she has whimsee dogs chews and other chew toys. Is this just her natural instinct to escape!? Also we are taking it slowly with her regarding taming, we don't know anything about her previous owner , good news she is less nervous of us now. We haven't progressed yet to taking treat from palm of hand so she walks on hand, but will take treat from holding out to her. Tali mainly lets us stroke her when distracted like chewing. Sorry the long fish post, just curious about hamster behaviour and hoping our little one is happy! Thanks

[cypher]

I think it's quite normal for them to get a bit obsessed with corners or boundaries, it's not necessarily a sign of stress or a desire to escape it's just natural exploratory behaviour & if she loves to chew then that's what she'll do! I wouldn't worry just gently try to distract her when she does is & maybe see if you can find something to put in the corners that might take her attention away from chewing.

[Quicksilver]

Thanks cypher for your advice. It's good to know it's normal for hamsters to display this type of behaviour-we have put in the corners of playpen wooden bendy bridges laying flat and this seems to help. We will continue distracting her gently when needed! Maybe chewing for Tali is possibly more exciting than all her toys