Help - Rat Mutilating Tails of Others

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Shelley

Shelley

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 21, 2007
Messages
1,151
Location
GTA, Ontario
I'm extremely frustrated right now, I wish rats could speak to me and tell me why the heck they do what they do. Lily, my oldest girl that has been with my other rats since they were young, has turned on everyone in the cage.

At first I noticed a few cuts on tails, and it slowly grew to more and more rats, then a day ago I come down to my little Cocoa with her tail bitten in 10 + places, screaming bloody mercy with blood splattered everywhere. It seriously looked like a horror scene. I really thought that my bossy girl, Addie, was picking on her sisters, but when I came downstairs she was hiding in a corner with her sisters, watching on in fear as Lily cornered Cocoa and bit her tail to shreds.

I'm very surprised by Lily's actions, I had never imagined she was the one hurting the others. A few scratches would be okay, but she is biting the other girls tails, all of them have at least one nasty bite on their tails, and I just don't understand. Why now?

This makes it even more frustrating, because I don't want to risk putting her back in as her aggression towards the others has increased rapidly in a matter of days. So now I have Lily by herself, and Molly by herself. Grrrr...

I just don't know what to do. *sigh* I need help with my rats, they just keep having aggression problems. The boys are perfect, but my girls are like nightmares. :roll: And it's not even the girls I thought would be the problems, it's the girls that seem like the least possible suspects.
 
Is Lily the one that attacked one of the babies way back when you tried to put them together?

This is very bizarre. Do you think Molly would be ok with the girls without Lily?

Could Lily be sick? How old is Lily? And how is Lily with you?
 
Has Lily always been aggressive with others? And its just escalating or is this completely new behaviours?

I am waiting to see what you answer to Jo's post too. :)
 
Yep - Lily is the one that attacked and killed a baby way back when :(

The behaviour is completely new, she's always been very gentle with older rats, never been in fights and has always been very accepting of new ones. She's been with a lot of girls, she lived with my previous group of 5-7 girls before they all passed away, and luckily George and Ella were still around to keep her company. Lily is not a dominant rat either, she never has been.

Molly and George are the ones that have major issues with each other, but Molly and Lily also didn't get along. I might try George and Molly again, I think if I take it extra slow I might get George and Molly to sort out their dominance, I hope. George is a classic dominant girl, she puffs up big and has lots of signs to show she is boss, but Molly is like Jo put it ' a sneaky dominant'. She is dominant and aggressive in a different way by pushing her head under rats and grabbing their butts/legs when they move away from her.

I don't know Lily's precise age, since she is my only pet store rat from a Petsmart, but she must be over 2 years now. I would have checked ONRMCA to find out, but thats not possible anymore. Lily has always been in great health, and she's still very active and mobile, you really can't tell she's over 2. I don't notice anything different with her, which is making her behaviour now even more bizarre. For an old girl, she's doing fabulous health wise, I couldn't ask for a healthier rat.

Lily is a doll with people, adores them. She's never been aggressive to me or ever bitten. The only time she was ever aggressive was with the babies, but to my fault, they were too young to have been put together, and I always attributed the attack due to their age. Once they were older, she took to the babies like they were best friends and were sleeping together in the hammock from day 1.

I hope that answers the questions, but I still find it completely strange. Since taking Lily out of the girls cage, there have been no new injuries, so I'm confident it was only her doing. The girls cage actually is quiet for once, so I think removing her has definitely lowered some sort of tension or fear. It wasn't until recently that injuries on tails started showing up (maybe 2 weeks ago?)

I'm wondering if there is something internally wrong with Lily that isn't showing. I really don't know :( She has absolutely no signs I can pick up on, and last night I did a thorough palpation of her body and felt nothing out of the norm.

Here's some photos of the bites :( The first one is George's single bite on the tail, the second is Cocoa's tail, and this is about 3 days after. I've been leaving her to clean her tail, since she won't let anyone touch her tail, it must be very sore. All the injuries scabbed over, but her tail is really icky looking and still blood stained.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27/Sp ... /bite1.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27/Sp ... 2under.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27/Sp ... te3top.jpg
 
Just catching up on this thread. Granted she shouldn't be being nasty to their tails, but any chance her instincts are kicking in and she is trying to pull them around by their tails? One of my younger girls does that to all of the new kids she meets. :roll: Merial is small but she likes to try to pull Luke around by his tail. Not sure if that is a maternal behavior or what.

Does she only do it IN the cage?

Maybe thats part of her way of showing dominance? She can order them around by pulling them by the tails??
 
She only seems to do it when I'm not around :roll: During free roam time they are all too busy exploring to bother with each other, and I only saw it for a brief moment catching the end of the incident. I have no idea how she starts it, whether she is grabbing tails, or just attacking them.. But the point is, it's strange that it has suddenly occured. She's been living with her cagemates for over 6 months now, and I've had her for a long time.

A couple of the girls have other injuries, Luna's toenail is ripped off and completely missing, and my other girl Addie has a large gash on her shoulders.
 
I've heard of older rats suddenly show signs of aggression. She would be at prime age for a pt. Check her for other symptoms like confusion, not being able to identify her food, seeming to not be able to smell.
 
Yeah, PT or some kind of brain tumor is one of the things I've been wondering might be the cause. I'm going to do some reading to see, but so far there are no symptoms other than sudden aggression. I'm not entirely sure yet what could be causing the behaviour, so I'm going to be watching her carefully. I've never dealt with PT or anything yet, and I really hope I still don't run into it :(
 
She seems to be sleeping - a lot. Way more than she usually does. I'll be taking them out for playtime later, I'll have to get a better idea at that time how she is doing. She's shoved all her fleece in the igloo so I can't see her. Stuffed all her food in there too :roll:
 
Lily seems comfortable on her own now, she doesn't seem any different than she was when she was with the other girls. She is quite cage aggressive though, not with people, but we had the girls out and they got close to the cage and she freaked out - puffed up, got all huffy and tried to grab/bite through the bars. We moved her cage now so she is in her own space. I just wish I knew why she is so aggressive to other rats now. :?
 
Have you noticed any other symptoms on her? It really is strange that she would just all of a sudden develop this behaviour. I would think it's neurological.
 
Could it be that she's sick, and so feels vulnerable to the others? and doing 'the best defence is a good offence' thing?
 
Scratch all that, new symptom today. :( She seems confused today and keeps digging into everything. I had her out and she spent all her time trying to dig into my clothes inbetween my arm and body. I moved her and she went straight back to doing it again.

I'm starting to think PT? :(
 
Guess it's time to arrange a vet appointment with Dr. Munn. I'm so glad I just got a job, my savings are about all drained, but I have enough to bring her in. Can't wait to get my first paycheck, going to need all the money I can with my rats as they age.
 
No, Lily has had buggies before and she isn't showing any symptoms, she's not scratching herself, no scabs or anything. I can treat her for it since I still have leftover meds for it, but I don't think its bugs. She just digs into me and keeps trying to squeeze inbetween my arm and body. She's just never done that before, it seems strange. And this evening when I came home from the movies she has porphyrin around her eyes. =/
 

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