Problems and aggression can occur during mating and we would not recommend you mix the sexes unless you intend to correctly care for and find homes for the offspring. The larger the colony is the more chance of aggression as in the wild large colonies would split off into smaller family groups when two dominant animals emerge, but if the numbers are kept to half a dozen or less then this would rarely occur. Males especially should not be introduced into colonies with existing males at a later date. It is very difficult to introduce adults and this can have dire consequences. It is very important that colonies are established together from a young age. You should keep them in small single sex groups (unless you intend to breed). They can be kept in large colonies in relatively small spaces, for example, a 3ft aquarium could house up to a dozen! A 2ft glass tank would be ideal for 2-6. They cannot climb and do not jump very high, but do like to burrow, so the tank should be deep enough to provide enough substrate that they can completely submerge themselves. They are extremely good at chewing and can chew holes in plastic and may be able to chew through metal bars. It is best to house this species in a secure chew-proof enclosure, glass tanks, aquariums, exo-terra terraria or similar are ideal as they cannot chew through glass. They are more active at night but are not strictly nocturnal and will forage for food or be awake during the day if something interests them. They have an adult length of around 8 – 12 cm and a maximum weight of around 30g. There may be some accuracy to the myth in that the steppes the lemmings are found in are a very flat and completely featureless terrain, the lemming does enjoy running and climbing but they have a very poor sense of height and danger and will run off the edge of a surface – in the wild though, there are no cliffs and they would not encounter any great heights. As the lemming population dropped, many stoats would die out – only a few making it to adulthood to breed the next year, when the lemmings would again breed – producing a strange cycle where the lemmings in the wild solely sustain the entire population of stoats. In the summer as the stoat’s bred and were the most active, they would hunt extensively culling the lemming population. The next summer, the same observations would occur and it became a myth that all the lemmings would jump off the cliffs and disappear.Īfter study, biologists found out that the lemming is the exclusive diet of the stoat that lives in these areas. In reality this is an urban myth the lemming in real life has no suicidal tendencies! In Mongolia populations would explode to up to 1000x their original size in the space of a single season, then dramatically it would be observed that in a very short space of time the population dropped to almost none (as they only breed in spring/summer in the wild). Many people have heard of lemmings due to the computer game, where they are famous for jumping off cliffs. 10 So should you keep a Steppe Lemming as a pet? The Lemming Myth
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