Hello all

So my 10 year old glider Phi-Phi had a “dominance bite” from one of her cage mates, both of which are a year old. It is not the male, Echo, who did that to her, but the other female, Ace.

I’ve had the separated either in adjacent cages or a partitioned same cage for several months. Phi-Phi looks basically healed with the last of the new fur filling in where the bite/scratch on her shoulder was.

She’s older than the other two by an large amount and isn’t as fast or nimble or energetic but generally speaking they all get along fine.

They had been all living together for 9 to 10 months before this had happened and I’ve never dealt with this before in all my years as a glider parent.

Any advice?

Animals always have to establish a hierarchy system to let each other know who's in charge and who's at the bottom. If it was just one bite and they aren't being aggressive, it could just have been to show him who's boss. Keep a close eye on them and check Phi-Phi for bites every morning to make sure nighttime play didn't get too rough.

Thank you

UPDATE

Phi-Phi has been reunited with Ace and Echo now for some time and all is well. Ever since I had re-unified the cage I have split their food into 2 separate dishes and have them significantly spaced apart. I have the Congo Cage, on which I have built an extension so that the current size (of usable glider space - not including its stand) is 32" wide, 21" deep, and 70" tall (but i keep it on it's stand so actually the "ceiling" of the cage is 86" off the ground. One food dish is about a foot off of the glider floor and the other is mid-extension.

Although it goes without saying, of course the lower food dish has many different canopies to be sure its as safe from falling glider mess

Side note: when I was cleaning and resetting, rearranging, swapping-in different toys and such, my partner commented "it's like you're creating a puzzle with all of your 'well I can't put this there because it can have some high velocity waste falling from it and it could hit the food, but if I put the wheel there they will not use it as much because it is too low, and I can't put it here because of how the other wheel is positioned there...' etc"

Anyway, they are always sleeping together and get on well, it just seems both Miss PhiPhi and Miss Ace love them their food and get a bit witchy about it at times. Mr Echo is an innocent bystander in all of this. They are both strong dominant lady gliders and the Grande Dame Miss PhiPhi wants to be sure she gets her fair crack at the food (since she is significantly older and not as fast as the younger two).