# Possessiveness over food



## Willieboo (Oct 22, 2012)

One of my female rats seems to have this problem, and I don't really know what to do about it. Every time I give the girls goodies or even fresh things, Lou never usually eats them--she just goes and stores them away in the igloo for later (I take the fresh things out of course; they can't stash those). Her sister eats her treats right away. Then, later, when the girls are both back in the cage, Mo likes to go snoop around in the igloo, where Lou has all the treats I've ever given her that day, and takes one or two to eat. But holy cow, if Lou is down there and she sees Mo take anything from the igloo, she goes ballistic and tries to take it back, even though it's only ONE THING and there's plenty of other food and miscellaneous things in there that she's stored.

If Lou gets the food back, she just goes and stores it again. But because Mo is the alpha, Mo usually puts up a tiff and gets really rough about it (queue the screaming and the wrestling). They've never hurt each other, but Lou gets very upset over it and it does seem to just break them apart for a few hours while they cool down.

What should I do? _Is_​ there even anything I can do about it? :c I've taken out the igloo before, but then Lou stashes everything in the litter box or the cube and the behavior continues. I don't really know why she feels the need to store everything, but it's a behavior which has led to her being very possessive over everything she stashes, and by association a behavior which seems to be poking holes in the relationship between the two of them.


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## ratchet (Sep 27, 2012)

Resource guarding is extremely common in nearly all animals - particularly intelligent ones. There isn't much you can do about it except for monitor it under your discretion. If your girl is making a cache of goodies, it's going to get raided. What you can do is give treats sparingly to mitigate the hoarding, or give none at all. 

My girls do the same thing. One caches and the other sneaks in and eats them. If the other is caught it gets in a lot of trouble - but it needs to learn. To offset the ridiculous amount of hoarding my one girl does I give treats they each only like. IE one girl only likes banana baby cereal so I give her that while the other gets dandelion drops (which she only likes) and the other gets an almond kibble. 

If you're really worried, resort to something they can't hoard like baby food or yogurt. 


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

I've heard of people feeding treats separately.... Could you just discourage the behavior somehow? 


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## ratchet (Sep 27, 2012)

You can't really discourage it with rats because its not the hoarding that's the problem, it's the other rat. If it were a dog you would teach it to "trade in" for a better treat - rats, while smarter, are not necessarily as motivated. If you discourage the rat you are punishing it for its natural behavior, which is very unfair. Instead, give them something they cannot hoard, or give them nothing at all. 


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## PurpleGirl (Oct 12, 2012)

My girl November does this, she hoards obsessively and sometimes I have to tell her off for trying to prevent the 3 other girls from eating. Sometimes she'll chase them around the cage, flip them, take back the nugget they took from her stash (or even just the food bowl sometimes) and repeat the process as many times as necessary. If I see her being aggressive and taking a nugget away, sometimes I'll take the nugget from her and give it back to the one she robbed it from; that usually prevents her doing it again, at least for a couple of hours. I worried for a while that little Freyja wasn't getting enough to eat because of November's behaviour, all you can do is be vigilant. If I'm giving treats, I tend to give her a slightly bigger one so the others have time to finish before she does, to prevent the aggressive theft. That's obviously not ideal for keeping her weight in check though, so I try to limit treats to once a week.


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## phatdaddy (Feb 3, 2013)

my oldest girl Mama hordes but doesnt get agressive with her cage mates.


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

Hmmm... This is my experience: my girls will steal from eachother, and try to forcibly take food. At which point i tell the offender "hey! There's more food over here! " and just give them another treat... Ill tell them "no! " when I see them using such behaviour, and 95 percent of the time, they listen . If they're super riled up,I reach in, pull them apart and scold their rattie bums ! 

It's funny, because Paisley ( the little bully!) will bully Scarlett, and when I just say " girls, stop it!" She hops to another level like " I didn't do anything!" I swear they're soooooooo smart!






... There's the bratty face.. "Mom, I didn't do anything i swear!" 


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## Willieboo (Oct 22, 2012)

Thanks for the input and advice, everyone! I didn't know it was such a common behavior in rats. It makes sense though that it'd be a natural type behavior (because I was thinking of pack-rats in the wild, I guess, or wild rats in general and how they behave and I assume domestic rats would be similar)...but I just wind up feeling a little helpless about it when it happens. I feel bad for Mocha when LouLou tries to steal things from her and I get them from LouLou and give them back...but then when I break it up I start feeling bad about LouLou because she looks at me like she doesn't know what she did to get in trouble...ugh, it's tricky.

Though when I break mine up and give Mocha the food back, I usually have to take Lou out while Mocha eats it, because she won't give up and keeps going back to take it. She'll do this with the regular Oxbow, too, so I do kind of have to keep an eye out. I think I'll try giving snacks/fresh stuff more sparingly or do things they can't store, like ratchet suggested; maybe that way LouLou will be more inclined to think they're a special occurrence and will eat them when I give them to her instead of stashing. Or I'll just take out the stashed goods before they go back, I don't know. I'd feel a little crummy if I took out all the stashed stuff because then Lou won't have actually gotten any goodies that day whereas Mocha would have, but there's not much I can do about the fact that she chooses not to eat them right off. I just wish they wouldn't get mad at each other over foodstuff. :C


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

Of you discourage it, they'll learn. They're incredibly intelligent, you know 


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## ratchet (Sep 27, 2012)

Why would you discourage them from what has enabled them to survive all these years? Training must always override instinct, but you need to be fair with what you expect out of a rat - or anything that you train. To them, it isn't "hoarding" - it has no negative connotation - they are simply ensuring they have food later. It's really not fair to discipline them for it. It's not like a dog, who resource guards toys - these rats are simply doing what is in their nature. You wouldn't punish a child for crying because it is uncomfortable, or discipline a horse for spooking within reason - the same should apply to a rat. 

When training anything, you need to set it up to be successful. It's paramount to ensure you are not creating an environment that "sets" them up to fail. This goes for everything - from teaching a child to read or disciplining a dog for resource guarding. You have to set them up correctly. If this is a behavior that alarms you, feed them something else as a reward instead - something so enticing they either eat it right there, or something they cannot hoard like honey/PB/yogurt. 

I'm sorry I'm being a little overly assertive on my replies here, but as a person that witnesses misunderstood animals and improperly trained/disciplined animals everyday, it's very hard to undo that type of improper association. The last thing you want your girls to do is feel as if they are being treated/reprimanded unfairly, which is something that definitely could arise if you discipline or punish them for what YOU view as unsavory behavior. To a rat, is a perfectly acceptable practice.


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## Willieboo (Oct 22, 2012)

I do believe I just said I would switch to giving them things that they cannot hoard instead of what I've previously thought to do when they've fought over food.
Please do kindly take into consideration that I am _trying_ to learn and understand my rats' behavior and provide a happy environment for them. But, seeing as I am not an expert on rats, I am still learning as I go and am more than happy to take your advice.
My main concerns are that they do not hurt each other, and that (as PurpleGirl said) one of my rats doesn't end up losing weight because she is not getting enough to eat, as LouLou does steal the staple diet from her sister while she's trying to eat as well.


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## PurpleGirl (Oct 12, 2012)

I agree with ratchet to an extent, in that hoarding is a natural behaviour and not something that needs addressing or attempts at training out of it; however, when the hoarding habit is so crazy like some rats get (my November for example) that the rat in question is hurting their cagemates or preventing them from eating, then I see no harm at all in scolding them for it or trying to get them to stop. Rats are clever, they know they are regularly fed, they are aware that their human always brings food, so attacking their friends for food really isn't necessary; if I didn't give November a row sometimes for her wild behaviour with the food, the others might often go hungry because she just won't let them touch it if I leave them be.


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## ratchet (Sep 27, 2012)

Willieboo said:


> I do believe I just said I would switch to giving them things that they cannot hoard instead of what I've previously thought to do when they've fought over food.
> Please do kindly take into consideration that I am _trying_ to learn and understand my rats' behavior and provide a happy environment for them. But, seeing as I am not an expert on rats, I am still learning as I go and am more than happy to take your advice.
> My main concerns are that they do not hurt each other, and that (as PurpleGirl said) one of my rats doesn't end up losing weight because she is not getting enough to eat, as LouLou does steal the staple diet from her sister while she's trying to eat as well.


Whatever you elect to do, I hope the best for you and your rats and hope it works. I am by no means an expert either!


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## Ratfinx (Feb 19, 2013)

My male does this he even gets nasty with me if I give blue a treat, I have no idea how to stop his brat like behaviour 


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

OK your rats don't have hoarding issues, my rat Amelia is the queen of all hoarders. During the blackout over a pound of Halloween snickers went missing (still individually wrapped). And last night while I was napping with Fuzzy Rat, I woke to watch her hopping by like the Easter Bunny with a lunch box size bag of animal crackers, then she hopped by with a lunch box size bag of giant graham goldfish and she wouldn't stop regardless of my yelling at her, she just scurried faster one way and hopped faster the other. And she was stashing the stuff somewhere under my king size bed, likely up in the box spring. And she had pretty much looted all of my daughter's lunch snack reserves (think half a shopping bag full), not to mention I think there are also several missing juice bags.

Now I'm not sure I should blame Amelia for bringing wild mice into the house, but I can certainly blame her for them being obese. Yes, to my amazement a pudgy wild mouse darted by me the other day in the kitchen.

Amelia is so fanatic about hoarding one day I set out little treats around the room. Fuzzy Rat watched where I put them and vacuumed up all that her pudgy little feet could carry her to. She's gifted with amazing eyesight and a remarkable spacial memory. But she was too old and fat to climb already. So I hid lots of treats in high places. Amelia tracked them down by smell one by one and stashed each under the radiator. Where Fuzzy Rat was conveniently wedged under to receive each goody as soon as it was delivered. Poor Amelia didn't get to eat a single piece due to her hoarding fetish and the fact that Fuzzy Rat figured it out and took complete advantage of her again. The last time I put Fuzzy Rat on a diet she kept bringing me lollipop sticks sans lollipop tops... So aside from the snickers, Amelia got the lollipops too. And Fuzzy Rat couldn't help herself, she's normally a kind of a neat freak and pushes food wrappers, dust bunnies and other debris out of her hiding places when she's finished with them, otherwise she was actually making fun of me putting her on a diet an I'd hate to think she's being ironic. Rat can't be ironic or sarcastic can they?

Anywho... When Amelia sees anything she likes, food or non-food, she's even stolen checks, you can see her little mind cranking, where is she going to put it and how is she going to get it there and she won't give up even shout at her or if I'm attached to the other end.

As to protecting the food she hoards, either she's really bad at it or Fuzzy Rat is just better at stealing it than she is at protecting it.... Amelia is 16 oz, Fuzzy Rat is 26 oz, the only way shes hurting anyone is by overfeeding them.

In her defense Amelia came from a neglectful household with way too many animals, she might have started hoarding as a survival tactic because she was very thin when we got her. As to breaking the habit, if losing everything she steals to Fuzzy Rat or the mice doesn't give her a clue and me yelling and throwing things at (near) her only makes her hoard faster, I'm pretty sure she's beyond help. I think she believes that if she can only steel enough, fast enough there might someday be something left over for her.

Like the old song goes... "whoops there goes another rubber tree plant". Now that's hoarding.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

As to food fights... Amelia will steal food from someone's plate, then Fuzzy Rat will swipe it from her, then whack! Amelia will stomp on Fuzzy Rats head with her forepaw and snatch the food back, then Fuzzy Rat will steel it back, then exasperated, Amelia will push Fuzzy Rat over on her back and start grooming her belly, as soon as the grooming is over and Amelia has forgotten why she was so upset, Fuzzy Rat will finish the food. It's hysterical to watch, like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Poor Daffy and Amelia, they are just so outclassed by their shiftier rivals... But usually I try to give them both treats at the same time so they don't fight.


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## 3 ratties (Apr 6, 2013)

One of my rats, steals her sisters treats too. it's really normal and theres not much you can do. as long as both are healthy weight then no problem..i mean if one was losing weight because the other was being so food dominate, then it would be a problem, but it doesnt sound like your concerned that one isnt getting enough food, it's just fighting over the treats. It'll be okay, i'm sure they're still friends lol


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