How To Teach Your Chinchilla Tricks
People are often surprised to learn that chinchillas are capable of learning to do tricks. The incredibly soft and adorable creatures are more than meets the eye. Chinchillas are rodents and, true to their nature, they enjoy learning to perform.
It is fairly easy to teach your chinchilla tricks due to their long memories. If something or someone does something to frighten them, they will remember what it was and will avoid a repeat of the same event until they feel that they can trust them or it again.
Just like training dogs, you can offer a reward to a chinchilla for exhibiting a desired behavior and it will learn to repeat that behavior. However, you will need to be certain not to raise your voice or scold the chinchilla since frightening it may make it more apprehensive. If your chinchilla doesn’t seem to have full trust in you, then you can use something like a whistle when you are trying to discourage bad behavior that could be dangerous to it like chewing on electrical wires.
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Teaching your chinchilla tricks should start with teaching it to eat food from your hand. Offer him a treat in the palm of your hand and make sure he must get on your hand in order to obtain the treat. Remain still without moving your hand toward the cage until he decides to take the treat. Since chinchillas are prey for other animals, they don’t like for you to come after them. If you frighten it by moving towards him, you will not accomplish what you have set out to do. You can’t teach your chinchilla tricks until he trusts you enough to eat from your hand. Once he does, move the food to your forearm so that he will need to climb your arm in order to reach it.
Getting your pet familiar with being handled is another important step in teaching your chinchilla tricks. You will need to do this gradually to give him time to adjust. Let the chinchilla climb onto your hand before lifting instead of snatching him up. The more comfortable the chinchilla is with climbing over your arms, the easier it will be to train him.
Another approach to get your chinchilla to climb on you is to sit in a small room with the cage in front of you in the floor with the door open. He may take advantage of the opportunity to climb over you. The key is getting him to trust you and let him know that you won’t harm him or grab him by the tail.
The chinchilla tricks that you can expect your pet to learn include climbing or jumping over the items that you set up. You may also be able to teach your pet to give you a kiss or to get a treat. They are a lot of fun to interact with and, with enough patience and a few of their favorite treats, you can add another aspect to the ways they can entertain you!
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