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Hey there! My rat Iris has recently started biting my siblings, to the point where she's drawn blood. I was never there to see any of the incidents. I sort of just assumed that it was aggression or crankiness, but I never had her try to bite me at all. I've also never had issues with her biting other rats. She power grooms everyone else a lot but that's pretty much it. I've been a lot more careful around her since then, and every time she starts 'reaching' for my finger I make a noise and pull back.
I'm starting to think now that she might just think that fingers are food. She's really possessive over her food even with the other rats in the cage (she's become the boss rat... I have to be careful when I hand out treats), and today I actually let her bite my finger. She sort of held onto it for a second and then let go and started licking my hand. I asked the siblings who've been bitten and both of them said they'd pulled their hand back when she grabbed their fingers.
Could Iris just be super possessive over her food? The bites did draw blood but they weren't super bad, so I'm thinking that maybe in her mind fingers are food and when we pull back it's another rat trying to snatch her food away.
I'm starting to think now that she might just think that fingers are food. She's really possessive over her food even with the other rats in the cage (she's become the boss rat... I have to be careful when I hand out treats), and today I actually let her bite my finger. She sort of held onto it for a second and then let go and started licking my hand. I asked the siblings who've been bitten and both of them said they'd pulled their hand back when she grabbed their fingers.
Could Iris just be super possessive over her food? The bites did draw blood but they weren't super bad, so I'm thinking that maybe in her mind fingers are food and when we pull back it's another rat trying to snatch her food away.