Tipping food bowl upside down

[xFluffyHamsterx]

Hey guys, i'm sure this behaviour is "normal" but i do want to know why he does it. It's a small plastic food bowl, i fill it up every evening. When I check it in the morning, it's always upside down, sometimes moves across the cage. I assume he pours his food out and moves it, but why?

thanks for reading

[AmityvilleHams]

Not too sure.It could be boredom,a fun activity that has been found,or just taking advantage of the fact that plastic is lightweight and fun to throw around!A good way to fix this is just get a ceramic bowl.It doesn't have to be specifically made for hamsters though,just something that is an actual food bowl.Ceramic is easy to clean,chewproof,and too heavy to be moved around unlike plastic.

[Pebbles82]

Lol! They do do some funny things. I bet he's having great fun with that bowl It maybe tips up when he goes to eat out of it (they put their paws on the edge sometimes). And he maybe logically thinks it might be easier to drag the bowl of food to where he wants to hoard it. Or he may just be having fun kicking it around! We had a cage with a plastic shelf before that had a little inset plastic bowl. Charlie used to flip it out of the hole all the time, then go underneath the shelf and look up (I think he was working out if there was an escape route underneath). Every morning he'd flipped it out, every day I put it back. Unfortunately it was in a corner and he thought it was a toilet (stupid idea putting a food bowl in a corner!) so he started weeing in it.

Eventually, with advice on here, I moved his potty litter tray into that corner and got him a new, different food bowl and put it somewhere else on the platform. That worked. Until he started aquaplaning down the shelf while sitting in the potty, found the food bowl underneath and flipped it out again LOL!

As Amityville says, a ceramic one stays put better. The first two on this link are good/nice. The polka dot ones are RSPCA recommended. The Mason cash ones are nice and sturdy and deep so would push down in the substrate a bit to keep them firm and lower.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb...h+hamster+bowl

I have this one - it's quite shallow so easy to get the food out of - it's a good depth for sitting on shelf but not for sitting on the substrate.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[pinkneon]

Some hamsters can tip over small ceramic bowls (not mentioning anynames, Sweep!) so a large one might be heavier. You could try scattering some tooto see if it that helps a bit in case the hamster is bored. Maybe he just likes making noise?!

[cypher]

Probably just digging around looking for the best bits
It seems he's scatter feeding for himself anyway so maybe start to do that instead of the bowl.