male chinchilla humping behavior? help!?

I rescued a male chinchilla about 3 months ago. i was told he is 4!
he loves being petted and looooves his chin scratches but a few weeks after he got settled in his new home everytime i go to pet/scratch him he gets ahold of my hand and tries to what i think? is hump my arm? i was thinking maybe he was just trying to climb up my arm but i dont think thats the case. he dont do this behavior to anyone else that pets him, not even his cage mate who was thought to be male but turns out was female. just my arm!!! is this a dominance thing? and if this humping behavior...will he ever grow out of it? i attached a pic to show what he is doing?

Yes he is exerting his dominance. I've had several who would do that. I just shook them off and eventually they stopped.

Welcome to the world of having male chinchillas. Some males never get past the stage where they hump everything they can. Try gently shooing him off of your arm and firmly telling him no. After a few times of this, most of them will stop.

I've had two males for around a month now, both around 4 months old. At what point shall I start expecting this magical behaviour to begin? They both try and mount up on each other at playtime but never in their cage and never actual humping.

He is a cutie! Yep, Bubs did that a lot when we first got him and I found it confusing too. But we would just shake him off and continue with whatever we were doing and he eventually got the message. Now that I think of it, he hasn't done it at all since the first month we got him.

We have a stuffed dog that is very soft and we let Bubs play with it during playtime (he doesn't chew it). He hops on it and tips it over and runs away popcorning, then comes back and humps it like crazy, lol! So I think he gets his jollies that way. We've also noticed that if we scratch his butt it makes him very randy and he runs right to Rita (the dog) for some lovin.

My old chinchilla Mr. Mumbles did this too! I always just shooed him off lol, he quit after awhile!

Mine actually does that too. Mostly when I'm stopping him from doing something he's not supposed to do. It's like he does it out of frustration. He makes a little chirpy noise while he does it too.


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Dsmith86 said:

I've had two males for around a month now, both around 4 months old. At what point shall I start expecting this magical behaviour to begin? They both try and mount up on each other at playtime but never in their cage and never actual humping.

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Not all males go through this.

I have 4 males (had 5) and only 1 of mine does it. I gave him a pillow/ cuddle buddy. He stopped humping my arm but he isn't very nice to that pillow.

The frustrated chirping is a great description! Sometimes he also seems to do it out of excitement, lol.

He shouldn't be caged with a female since he was a rescue. That could be encouraging the humping behavoir to be worse even though you haven't seen him do it to her. Please separate them.

haha, Tribble does that too. He will be 4 in October. Every once in a while, He will do it when I am cleaning the cage. He will "grab" my hand and it seems like he is trying to climb up my arm, but no... he just wants to show that HE is the one in charge. I just ignore it. He also has a pillow and cuddle buddy that he takes his frustrations out on, if ya know what I mean. He also likes to "groom" himself too...LOL. He is just very active in that area. Typical macho male, I guess...

I'm glad this is normal behaviour lol. Elijah does the same thing when I put my hands in his cage (humps my hand/arm). At first I thought he was just trying to climb up! I'm only figuring this out now. (I've had him for 2wks).

For playtime I usually sit on the floor, but if I do get up and move around he humps my feet/ankles. I thought it was cute that he was trying to run up my legs......but I realized that wasn't his intentions when I saw his "part" all dangling out. -_- lol

It doesn't really bother me... All of my pets are males, so it's nothing I haven't seen before haha.