I was thinking about this the other night and thought I would post it here for discussion. I'm curious to know what other experienced robo owners might think.
It occurred to me that the space dwarf hamsters are housed in seems kind of small for a pair of them. Usually a cage about the size of a ten gallon tank is the general housing arrangement for many dwarf hamsters. I've seen plastic cages in pet stores smaller then this designed for dwarfs as well.
Muffin and Cupcake were housed in a ten gallon tank to start with. It seemed like plenty of room for them. But after watching the two and observing them during their natural waking hours, I noticed that their hyper tendency had them constantly running into each other and over each other as they combed and scurried along the glass walls.
They would do this for what seemed hours on end, I'm sure mostly while I was sleeping at night. Now of course I don't know how a hamster thinks, but I can assume that after you have lived in a tank with a cage mate who your constantly running over and who is running over you, would make it seem like there wasn't enough room for the two of us. I could see this becoming a large part of the reason why so many robo hams start showing aggression.
Im wondering, if you housed a pair of robos in a larger tank or a large sized bin, would aggression be as common? If they had more space to run freely, and people started off with two wheels and scatter feeding, do you think their chances of living together in peace would be higher?
How far do you figure these little fuzz balls would run in the wild each night? I assume that in a wild colonies, the females would go off to forage on their own and come back to nest together, where at that time they are pretty much sleeping and grooming? In a cage environment they are really forced to do everything together... what are your thoughts? Please discuss?
lack of space, a reason for cage aggression?
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