Hello!
I'm reasonably experienced as I've owned a total of 4 female syrians (2 currently). However I get paranoid about any behavior changes.
The hamster in question is about 1.5 years old, she's been healthy, active, very routine based as long as I've had her. Usually awake and ready to roam and then ready to sleep 3-4 hours later. Mostly consistent sleep /wake schedule in the 1.5 years.
The behavior change lately is that she seems more hyper than usual, which is hard to judge anyway, I mean, female syrians are little balls of energy on average and she's always been fairly hyper (I let her free roam in my fairly large hamster-proofed bedroom pretty much every day for a few hours). However it's not just the fact that she seems more "antsy" and hyper, but she's awake for much longer than usual. She wakes up around 10pm and used to be active till 1-2am, and then happily collect food and go to bed. This past week, she is SOOOO active, it's currently 5:25 am and I took her back out of her tank about 45 minutes ago cause she was begging to get out, this little goof just refuses to go to bed!
So a couple things to know is, they have huge tanks with deep bedding and lots of toys/objects/large wheels. The tanks are "Bigger World" from Niteangel, the largest size they offer, pretty significantly bigger than a typical 40 gallon. So I don't think the habitat is the issue + she free roams my room every night.
On top of being extra hyper, and on top of being active for 7-8 hours instead of 3-5 hours every night, she also tries more aggressively than usual to dig her way out of my bedroom. It's a pretty good size bedroom, I'm definitely not getting the deposit back here cause she's ripped chunks out of the carpet all over and chewed chunks out of the baseboard hahaha, and her trying to find ways out of any "confined space" (no matter how big) is normal. But lately she will spend a large portion of her free-roam time trying to dig out near my bedroom door barricade. I'm talking aggressively, she's destroying the carpet and anything I put in the way and often will go at it for 20-30 minutes straight (I don't care about the carpet, just her!). She used to just try to dig out periodically and briefly, but now it seems like it's her life's goal to break down the barricade.
Is any of this a cause for concern or is she just bored of the environment at 1.5 years old? She's been free roaming this room for probably 8 months now so I'm not surprised she's bored of it (I try to put toys and new obstacles/tunnels/digging boxes around my room for added enrichment but they ignore most of it). I just fear something might be wrong, hoping I'm just paranoid for no reason which is usually the case. Any behavioral change scares me.
Sorry for big post, thanks in advance!
