Can someone tell the meaning of this sound ?

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Aletheia

New member
Joined
Dec 11, 2020
Messages
2
Hello guys,
I'm new here and new to the chin world. My girlfriend and I got a chinchilla at the beginning of October. Now he is 5 months! He's a cutie and although not really active when in his cage, when it's time to get him out, he zooms everywhere.
He doesn't know when to stop so we allow him 15/20min out of his cage.

Since a few days, he has been acting really weird towards me (main caretaker). He nibbles on my hand a LOT, it's not hurting but i've notice that he just nibbles and sit on my hand while doing this.
Also, he's doing a particular sound and I couldn't find that much info about it, the only thing that could be really close to it is a "mating call" sound.

Here are some things i've gathered since today :

-He popcorns all around me as a little dance when he's really happy/excited, while doing this particular sound.
-I've seen him staring at my hand and wagging his tails.
-When my arm is close to him while he does the sound, he tries to climb on it like he was digging something, and then he sits on my arm until he zooms again.

At first I was pretty panicked and I didn't know what to do because i've seen him giving less attention to his pellets and while he's still eating his hay, he puts his hay everywhere :eek:
But I'm more thinking about him hitting puberty and trying to mate my arm because of hormones.

Here is the sound i've managed to record : Vocaroo | Online voice recorder

Can you guys confirm this is not a bad sound ? I can be really worried about him when he's acting weird, this is my first real pet and I'm trying my best to make him happy! :)

Thanks a lot!
 
The nibbling on the hands, if it's not hard then he is grooming you, it's a sign of affection. The wagging his tail normally means they are horny, they release scent from glands near their butt, wagging his tail helps spread the scent around. Most of the sounds on the sound clip just sound like "chatting" like chins do when talking to each other. The more urgent sounding squeaks could be "any ladies around?!" 🙂

By the time a chin is around 6 months they are close to full grown so they do tend to eat less then they did when younger and growing a lot. Most adult chins only eat about 2 tb of pellets a day, and a pile of hay about the size of them. Making a mess with the hay is normal, I'm pretty sure they have to sort through the whole pile to find the best piece to eat first. 😏

Chins go through puberty starting around 4-6 months old, so yeah I would say his hormones are saying it's time to mate. Some people get their chin a chinnie buddy, it's basically a fleece stuffed animal stuffed with fleece scraps that they can have their way with instead of your arm.
 
That's some great infos, i've been lurking a lot on this before registering and you were every time on point! Many thanks again, I appreciate! :D
 
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