Yesterday, my wife and I went to PetSmart to get some doggie treats. One of the employees was walking around the store cradling her pet chinchilla and showing it to curious customers. My wife has known for a long time that I wanted a pet chinchilla, so after a little finagling she bought me a spur-of-the-moment Easter present. We took her straight home, set up her cage, and took her out of the cardboard carrier for some quality cuddling and bonding. Unfortunately, she wants nothing to do with me. If I tried to pick her up, I immediately had a South American flying explodo-rodent on my hands. But she took to my wife like a duck to water—when my wife picked her up, she snuggled comfortably in her arms and contentedly twitched her little whiskers back and forth. What gives? She’s like that with every animal she comes in contact with—dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, chinchillas—they all just love her and flock to her without apprehension. The creepy old bird lady who works at the local feed store says my wife is ‘special.’
On the other hand, our neighbor down the street has just the opposite characteristic—animals just hate him. Normally docile and friendly dogs just go bonkers when they see him—even if it’s the very first time they’ve ever encountered him. What is it? Does she give off some sort of odor that animals like? And does our neighbor give off some sort of odor that they don’t like? If I didn’t know any better, I would begin to suspect that there was some sort of extrasensory communication going on between my wife and the critters she comes in contact with. I’m really starting to wonder here…
I’m not an expert at dealing with animals but I know that some animals respond aggresively to certain odours, for example a friend’s dog took a dislike to me because I smoke and it could smell the tobacco on my clothes.
I would suggest you try interacting with the animal whilst not wearing any deodorant or after shaves of any kind. Make yourself as odour-less as possible (I think there are some odour-less soaps you could use to wash) and see if that makes any difference.
Hard to say why animals respond differently to different people. Sometimes you can figure it out and sometimes you can’t…the animal is just weird.
That said animals most definitely have their own “language” and by knowing it you can commincate with the animal better than you might think. For instance dogs have the “lets play” move (butt in the air, elbows on the ground…sort of a bow). Do that to a dog and mroe often than not you will see it get excited and start running around to play. Cats greet with a head butt. Try head butting your cat in return to its head butt (gently…more rub than butting) and you usually get positive results.
Knowing how to approach an animal is important and it can be different for different animals. For instance reaching over the top of a dog’s head to pet it is somewhat disconcerting to the dog…reaching under the head to pet its chest is preferrable when meeting a dog for the first time (to a dog you know well there is little to no need to worry about that). Reach out a hand close to the dog and let it approach you and get a good sniff. Kneel down to be closer to the dogs level…avoid leaning over the dog. If you are smiling try not to show your teeth. Etc., etc.
Sadly I do not know the language of Chinchillas but doubtless there is info out there on them. Still, some things you might pay attention to are how you approach the animal and how you go to pick it up. I’ll wager slow moves are better than fast moves. Reaching under or better, putting your hand in front of it and letting it climb on of its own accord would likely be a good move. Avoid grabbing and restraining…a nice nest fo your hands should be a good place to hang…not make it feel like it has been caught by a predator. Try raising your voice a few octaves when talking to it (men’s deeper voices can be scary to an animal). Bribery works…find a favorite treat and lure it to you (patiently).
There can also be intangibles that I am not sure how you would ever know to correct. Perhaps it doesn’t like how you smell. Perhaps a cologne or deodorant you use it does not like. Maybe you had garlic the day before and it smells that comong off of you and does not like it. I am not saying that any of those things are a cause but they might be and as you are a new thing to it the animal has not built up any trust so goes with the first thing it gets…that it dislikes how you smell.
Occasionally you do see a real life Dr. Doolittle. Monty Roberts ( http://www.montyroberts.com/ ) gained fame by “listening” to horses and speaks to them so well he has managed to “tame” a wild stallion (real running free kind) in 30 minutes (IIRC) so he could lie on its back without it freaking out. He has done it all by gaining a deep understanding of how horses “talk” to each other and emulating them to gain their trust. Truly amazing to see him in action and his life story is rather interesting too.
Best of luck with your new pet. Watch out for their bites though! I used to play with Chinchillas in my high school biology class and they would be sitting contentedly in my hand then nip me for no apparent reason and revert to sitting placidly. They never broke skin but it did hurt some (like a bad pinch) and more to the point it startles you making you have to restrain yourself from the initial reaction to toss the animal out of your hands.
Yes, one of my strongest childhood memories is having seen a hamster meet his demise in exactly that manner. It was probably in the fourth or fifth grade or so—one of my classmates brought several of his hamsters to school for show-and-tell. One of the other students was handling one of them when it suddenly bit her hand. She literally flung the hamster into a wall, breaking it’s neck and killing it. It’s funny how things like that stick in your memory. To this day, when handling small animals, I always prepare myself mentally to not have that reaction if it does bite me.
My ex-wife is what I term an “animal magnet”. She used to volunteer at our local zoo and routinely astounded the full-time keepers who witnessed the way animals of all sorts responded to her. Just a couple of examples.
Michelle stood at the edge of the alligator pit and growled at the female gator, who was about fifteen feet away. The gator raised herself up and started moving forward towards Michelle, then stared directly at her. The keeper who had been caring for that particular gator for several years was watching from the other side of the pit, and came over to announce that she had never seen that animal respond like that to anyone.
Not far from the alligator pit is a small moat-enclosed island, populated by a dozen or so medium-sized black monkeys. The alpha male of the colony, known as Mikey, seems to have decided that Michelle is an escaped member of his harem. Every time she passes by the island, Mikey dashes to the edge of the moat and bellows at her. If she stops to look at him, he calms down and lets out a sort of coo. But if she ignores him and keeps walking by, he’ll hop up and down and shriek in rage.
The zoo’s education department keeps a number of smaller animals that can be taken to schools, hospitals or nursing homes. Some of these are exotic reptiles, including several species of skink. Two of these had to be adopted out because they ceased to be suitable for taking on visitations. In a nutshell, once Michelle starting working with them, they refused to let anyone but her hold them. Not that she was particularly proud of this, mind you.
One exhibit is a huge fish tank that houses freshwater fish from South America. The most prominent inhabitant is a giant river catfish (Michelle calls him Chester) who is probably around four feet long. Every time Michelle visits the zoo, she goes by the tank to say hello. She places her hand against the glass and calls out to Chester. He almost always swims right over to her and “kisses” the glass where her hand is. The keepers swear he doesn’t do that for anyone else.
I have no idea how she does it. She has no idea why these things always happen to her. But I’ve seen more than enough incidents just like these to convince me that something is going on.
Our local vet definitely has an affinity with animals. We have always taken our pets to him and he really has an amazing ability to calm them down, figure out what is wrong, and administer to their needs.
This, ironically, is coupled with his total lack of inter-human communication skills. He just seems to be this person who much prefers animal company to human company. Kind of an interesting dichotomy.
I’ve always been good around animals (or rather, animals often react well to me, wild or domestic), though the only really amazing experience I’ve had was when I was 12 or so:
My zoo had the only California condor in captivity. They kept it all alone in a huge flight cage and it usually spent it’s time perched way up in the back of the cage where you could hardly see it. It’s name was Topa Topa. One day I walked up to one corner of the cage and called it’s name and waved. It flew straight to me and landed on the other side of the cage and just looked at me. I talked to it for a while and then left to go check out some other animals. The next time I came to the zoo, I called Topa Topa and it flew to me, just as it had before. I found a sturdy stick on the ground, stuck it through the cage mesh, and the condor grabbed the other end. We played tug of war for a minute or two. This was great! My dad ponied up for a zoo membership, and I came out every weekend to visit my friend Topa Topa.
One day, a keeper saw me and scolded me for ‘bothering’ the bird. Soon after that, Topa Topa was removed from public view.
A lot of people who go into animal welfare do it because they don’t like humans very much.
Unfortunately they soon find that ability to interact with other people successfully is a big part of animal medicine.
I am amazed and pleased at the number of people on this board who get the reference. However, I realized after I selected it as my screen name that it isn’t very appropriate. Washoe is a female chimp, something I remembered only after I had registered. :smack:
My friends and families have always referred to me as a “Doolittle,” as virtually all cats and dogs take an instant shining to me and I’m able to hold and touch animals who won’t let other humans do the same.
Curiously, though, most horses hate me and I’ve been thrown/bitten several times. Perhaps more accurately than accusing horsies of hatred, I’m afraid of horses ever since my grandfather thought it was funny when his giant quarter horse chased me around the yard when I was five years old. Horses seem hyper-attuned to the fact that I’m nervous around them and they respond oddly.
