Gnawing at the cage bars

Gnawing at the cage bars is a special form of stereotypy you can often see with Mongolian and other gerbils but sometimes also with other rodents. The individuals gnaw at the cage bars sometimes for hours without any interruption. For species hardly nibbling at furniture or cage at all even short time intervals may be a hint on a behaviour disorder.

A striped grass mouse gnawing on the mesh

The disorder is caused by too small and/or boring enclosures that don’t keep the rodents hardly or not at all busy. Keeping a mouse alone can cause this disorder, too.

Enlarging the enclosure and/or making the interior more interesting will help. Offering enrichment like adventure food (twigs with leaves, live insects, millet spray) can reduce the disorder on bored mice. Single mice simply have to get at least one friend.
The longer the mice gnaw at the cage bars the less likely it is that the behaviour will disappear completely after abolishing the cause. That’s why some individuals having lived in small cages for a longer time still show that behaviour in an enclosure of a proper size. Sometimes the gnawing intervals decrease by and by or the mouse shows the behaviour only from time to time, but sometimes the get never rid of that habit completely and show it for the rest of their lives.
It’s easy to prevent from this behaviour disorder. You only have to offer a proper enclosure with a proper interior from the very beginning and you must never keep social species alone.

Translation
Angelus Noctis
Proofreading
Jedediah