Is he protecting him?

[MotherOfVenus]

So my sister lives with us but she doesn't interact with our three boys very often (she worked two jobs for a while otherwise she would have) and the other day I had the boys in their play pen and she was sitting next to it. When she went to stand up Tommy plastered himself to the wall of the pen and Astro jumped on top of Tommy and made a growling/hissing sound and bared his teeth at my sister. Astro does that often with both Tommy and Ice. If the act scared he climbed on top of them, but he's never made the noise or bared his teeth at anyone or any dog before. Is this normal? Or is Astro like some strange mother hen type? Does this mean he might bite someone if he feels himself or his brothers are threatened?

 

[jorats]

Rats don't normally do that. He must have felt threatened. Rats communicate to each other and Tommy might has sent the signal that he was worried and Astro jumped to help. I would caution all your friends to never put their fingers through the cage bars. Your boys are quite protective of their habitat/environment.

 

[MotherOfVenus]

Rats don't normally do that. He must have felt threatened. Rats communicate to each other and Tommy might has sent the signal that he was worried and Astro jumped to help. I would caution all your friends to never put their fingers through the cage bars. Your boys are quite protective of their habitat/environment.

Ok... They don't have any problems when me or my daughter put our fingers through the bars of their cage. Should we stop doing that then or just people they don't spend a lot of time with? And does that include the play pen?

 

[jorats]

In my household, that was our rule, no fingers through any bars. The way I look at it, it's their home and I respect that so when I want to interact with them, I open the cage door and let them come to me, I allow them to wake up, sniff the air to know it's me and come visit me if they want. When it's their out time, I would sit with them in the playpen and they would come visit me, climb me, cuddle with me.