#ArkAngel Predator

[everytechever]

Acer’s Asia Pacific Predator League 2022 Concludes

Congratulations to Polaris Esports and Genius Esports! #PredatorLeague2022 #PolarisEsports #GeniusEsports #EveryTechEver

The Asia-Pacific Predator League 2022 Grand Finals took place in Tokyo, Japan from November 11-13, where 30 teams from across the Asia-Pacific region gathered to showcase their skills in intense team battles. The first physical competition in three years was successfully concluded and was broadcasted through multiple channels, resulting in massive viewership. 30 teams from across the…

[bronzewool]

Predator's Gold

Predator's Gold is the sequel to Mortal Engines (that Peter Jackson movie about the cities on wheels eating smaller cities on wheels that no one saw) and its not as good as the first book. It has every single cliche; a love triangle that takes up half the book, and an obvious reveal where a well renowned adventurer and author turns out to be a fake who plagiarised all his adventures.

The frustrating part is there was a brilliant mystery set up with the Lost Boys, which is underutilised because we shift between perspective with all the major characters and it sucks all the tension out of the narrative.

The story could have been so much better if we didn't meet the Lost Boys until Tom is kidnapped and left to wonder; is the engineer really seeing the ghost of his dead son wondering around the vicinity? Who is taking the missing objects? Who was the pale faced boy Tom saw by his bed warning him Hester was leaving? Combine that with the stories Pennygold is spinning of parasite vampire ships latching onto the underside of cities and sneaking onboard to drain their resources, and you've got a decent thriller.

The best part of the book though is watching the extremes Hester is willing to go to in order to keep Tom by her side. Going as far as to sell the location of the city Anchorage to the Huntsman city Arkangel and orchestrating a plan to "rescue" Tom from slavery so he'll stay with her. It works with her established character from the previous book, a bleak pessemist who is physically and mentally scarred by the world, knows the horrors that await them around every corner and is willing to do anything to keep the one person who loves her unconditionally. Even the final act does not paint her in a positive light as she is only rescuing the city because of Tom. It's a gender flip of the morally grey warrior who has forsaken the world and only cares about what makes their naive significant other happy.

Hester continues to be the best part of this series but everything else, outside the world building, is very lackluster.

2.5/5

[winterroseposts]

Mortal Engines #2

After the war cities are built to move and larger cities destroy smaller ones for slaves and resources.

Two years after the fall of London Hester Shaw and Tom Natsworthy are forced to land their airship on the city of Anchorage as it flees from predator cities over the Ice Wastes.

SPOILERS - Lots of spoilers

I really enjoyed the first book but this one showed second book problems with a fairly slow start until about a third of the way in.

Tom is still very naive and cheats on Hester. It's keeps getting mentioned how kind he is but the only example of his kindness is him being with Hester despite her disfigurement.

Hester is so desperate to keep Tom that she sells a city full of people who had helped them into slavery by the predator city Arkangel. She does come back to help Anchorage. The narrative does its best to note that the only deaths from the attack on Anchorage and Arkangel's sinking were shown to be the attackers but an entire city slowly sinking into Artic ice doesn't come without casualties.

Freya started off spoiled and pampered and grew to be a proper leader. I would have liked to have seen more of Caul and him settling into life on Anchorage.

Did it have to end with "babies ever after"? Tom and Hester are still in their teens. There are plenty of stories to tell without making them parents.

3 Stars

[an-apocalypse-of-magpies]

On the world of Mortal Engines, class, and the metaphors of consumption

This is less an essay and more a collection of thoughts. Basically I just saw a video on the Mortal Engines film and its being a civilisation too stupid to exist. I got fed up, mainly because so many of the criticisms amounted to ‘the book did it better’ with little elaboration but also the arrogantly grating voice of the presenter got on my nerves, but I cannot deny the points made and in fact wanted to elaborate further on the worldbuilding of this series and, while unrealistic, look at why the books were so engaging.

Some background to start off - Mortal Engines is a four-book series (and three-book prequel sub-series) written by English author Phillip Reeve, and depicts a bleak post-apocalyptic world. North America is uninhabitable and lost to the sands of time, irradiated, poisoned, and flattened by war. Eurasia is mostly barren plains. And, of course, the central premise - towns and cities have raised themselves onto mobile platforms and trundle about. Well, mostly. A major antagonist to this system is the Anti-Traction League, a collective of nations hiding out in old east China, the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia and some of Africa. They are seen as barbarians and heathens by much of the world for refusing to mobilise, instead hiding in stationary citadels behind their mountains. The Traction Cities near-universally engage in a philosophy of Municipal Darwinism, a savage system of bastardised pseudo-biology where cities literally predate each other and ‘consume’ each other for resources. Cities eat towns, towns eat smaller towns. Some towns and cities deliberately adapt to cheat the system and make themselves a less appetising target, or for that matter a more aggressive and efficient hunter.

THE TRACTION CITIES

The first three books tend to focus their action on one or two cities, whereas the last is a bit more of a road trip. The other consistent thread is multiple characters’ stories running concurrently, usually reconnecting near the end. This allows the books maintain an open, almost global scale - you’ll nearly never not be moving, even sitting still on a city, which reinforces the theme of unnatural life. The first book focuses on London, which has been sulking in what was once Britain (by sheer happenstance on their part and pure irony on ours), and is suddenly running at full pelt back into Europe and eastward as fast as her engines can carry her. Why? London’s not the biggest city around, and the vast expanse of Eurasia is now the Great Hunting Ground - it’s where the big boys play, and by play I mean ‘savagely predate each other’. It’s dangerous territory for a little city. But over the first book, it becomes increasingly apparent that Traction Cities are increasingly non-viable option for existence. Fuel is scarce, prey moreso, and what morsels London can confidently snap up will not sustain it for long. There is an ecosystem at play here - static settlements can farm resources, but are universally seen as food, either by small bandit settlements to raid for supplies or for larger towns to just straight-up eat. Small towns too small to hunt tend to be miners or gatherers, either mining minerals to use or trade, or gathering resources like wood from natural deposits or sifting through the waste heaps left by bigger cities. Most cities bigger than that are ‘urbivores’, or hunter towns, that hunt and eat smaller prey or opportunistically scavenge the ‘carcasses’ of dead cities. I mentioned specialisation earlier, and like in nature, species and cities can occupy a niche that gives them an advantage and thus increased chance at survival. Airhaven, for example, is a politically-neutral city in the air that floats around Eurasia seasonally and serves as a rest stop, fuelling station and trading exchange for airship pilots the world over, Tractionist or no. Tunbridge Wheels is a pirate-run town that has a lightweight wooden chassis and flotation devices to hunt amphibiously in a world where many small towns escape threat by setting up on islands.  Panzerstadt-Bayreuth is a conurbation of four massive cities, too big to survive long without prey, they banded together to take down the biggest of prey (it’s unclear whether they achieve this through sheer size or whether they decouple and become a pack hunter). Anchorage, the last American city, neutered its own jaws to increase mobility, skating around the frozen north too fast for threats to catch up with, and survives on trade. Brighton is a pleasure city that paddles around the warm Mediterranean, technically still a predator but with no real agenda and about the only city left that can be called a tourist city (it’s run on the back of brutal slave labour). And these are just the major ones. Throughout the books, cities are treated like living things ... like mortal engines.

And like living things, they need resources to survive.

A DYING WAY OF LIFE

The books are inconsistent on the origins of Traction Cities, as it turns out deliberately - history is written by the winners, after all. But it’s all closely tied to the ‘apocalypse’ part of the post-apocalytic I mentioned earlier. Long ago in-universe, long into our future, was a terrible event known as the Sixty Minute War. This war tore the world asunder with nuclear and quantum energy weaponry. America, the epicentre, is simply no more (it turns out there are some fertile areas in Nova Scotia, but for the most part America is dead). Entire new mountain ranges were born, notably the Tannhäusers in East Asia that shield the heartland of the Anti-Traction League. There was a long period of geological and tectonic instability. According to legend, Traction Cities arose to escape these instabilities. In other words, like animals will flee a volcanic eruption, cities first became mobile to escape and survive. Trade was likely facilitated by towns literally being able to park next to each other. Ironically, London was also where everything changed. After Nikola Quercus conquered (static) London with his mobile fortresses, he decided to upgrade and raise London onto wheels to become the first fully-mobile city. And he did it for war. After all, there’s no better comeback to ‘you and what army’ then literally rolling up with your entire city. By the series present, the idea had caught on and grown into the ideology described above. But herein lies the problem. Early Traction London was a tiny little thing. Now it’s not even the biggest fish in the pond, but it’s still HUGE. And, as we all know, big things need lots of energy to go. London is described as having a top speed of about sixty miles per hour at the height of a hunt. So, you need fuel. There is still oil in this world, mainly because they now have no qualms about mining Antarctica, but if you think there’s nearly enough crude oil to run a world full of cities like London you are sorely mistaken. Wood’s not much better off. And, of course, Traction Cities tend to run on some form of internal combustion engine - it’s only at the very end of the traction era that science has advanced enough for a town to experiment with magnetic levitation. So what do they burn? Well, bits of other prey towns. Do you see the problem? Use fuel to hunt towns, burn those towns for fuel. What next? And it’s not just fuel. London captures a little salt-mining town called Salthook at the beginning of the first book to introduce us to the concepts at play, and we see what goes on in the Dismantling Yards - part of a system literally called the Gut, in case the metaphor wasn’t clear yet. Everything is recycled. Bricks, mortar, steel, wood, everything. Because the state of technology is so weird in this world, Old-Tech (technology from before the SMW) can be incredibly valuable to history and/or science, and London is keen to snaffle that up too. The people are interred into refugee camps, though if you know anything about how real-life Britain treats refugees you can probably see where that is going. And it’s not enough. It’s never enough. Food is an even more pressing concern. Unless you’re very rich (more on that in a mo), food is mostly algae-based, then hardy vegetables that grow quickly like cabbage. And it’s running out fast. And London’s a big city with a lot of resources at its disposal. Most cities don’t even have that. A lot of cities are starving on the wheels, city and populace alike. A lot of cities run on slave labour, and feed those slaves as little as they can get away with. Shan Guo, home of the Anti-Traction League, is a green and vibrant land only because it doesn’t have cities running over or eating its farmlands every other day (and, again, city folk generally don’t know this - they’re given endless propaganda that Anti-Tractionists are barbarian warbands a la Mad Max). A lot of the A story is told from the point of view of Tom Natsworthy, who until the events of the book had never left London. He’s never seen bare earth or walked on mud before. He’s never seen a horse. The idea that you can survive, much less thrive, outside of a Traction City is alien to him. But on the city he came from, everything is rapidly running out, and some cities are turning to desperate measures to survive, including Arkangel openly bribing pilots to sell out the locations and courses of nearby cities. A chilling scene in the first book even has Tom see, from the safety of the air, the corpse of Motoropolis, a city not unlike London that literally just starved to death, running out of fuel and helpless as the scavengers closed in. It’s been weeks since the city stopped, and the narrative description evokes the grotesqueness and sadness of a whale carcass. Sheer Jingoism is about the only thing keeping Municipal Darwinism alive - Traction good, stationary bad.

CLASS, CLASSISM, AND OTHER SOCIAL OPPRESSIONS

In a world so starved as this, compassion is hard to come by. Cities still exist mainly by virtue of rigid social stratification, and often that stratification is literal - most medium-to-large cities have tiers, and will generally arrange those tiers based on social class. London, for example, has seven tiers. The bottom two tiers are dominated by the Gut, the engines, and homes and communities of the workers who keep them running. Tiers 4 and 3 are miscellaneous proles of increasing social standing. Tier 2 is mostly what I’d call ‘tourist London’ - lots of the nice bits and the establishments that London likes to be proud of. Because of his work at the London Museum, this is the quality of life Tom Natsworthy was most used to. Tier 1 is High London, where all the rich live and have their amenities and nice parks (and even that doesn’t last - London’s food shortage means even the High London parks are eventually, begrudgingly, turned over for food production). Katherine Valentine, the hero of the first book’s B plot, lives here. Finally there’s Top Tier, which is purely administrative. The only buildings are the Guildhall (the seat of government), St Paul’s Cathedral (which the Engineers’ Guild have secretly been installing a deadly superweapon in under the guise of ‘restoration’ work) and the headquarters of the Guild of Engineers, the most powerful of London’s Guilds. Social stratification is nearly non-existant, and people are shown to get very uncomfortable when out of ‘their space’. Tom is sent to work in the Gut during the capture of Salthook as a punishment before the plot ejects him from London, and he notes being actively intimidated by the claustrophobia, the dirt, the rough and burly labourers, and the noise. But despite Tom’s relatively privileged life - he lives near High London, above the heat and noise and smoke of the engines, in the care of one of the top four Guilds of London - he is of very low social status. Tom Natsworthy is an orphan; his parents were Historians, but were killed when an accident occurred and part of Tier 3 collapsed, crushing anything on Tier 4 beneath. Even before that, the Natsworthys were middle class at best, but being orphaned meant being left to the care of an orphanage run by the Guild of his parents, the Historians. The Historians were Tom’s only source of education, and eventually they would employ him, but with no parents or money, Tom can only afford a Third-Class apprenticeship. He has no upwards mobility within the Guild, and with no money he can’t leave and train with another. His dream of being a pilot trader, or better yet adventurer, will never come true under normal circumstances. The rich live in a completely different world yet. Katherine Valentine, daughter of the Head Historian and the Lord Mayor’s ‘right-hand man’ Thaddeus Valentine, has a positively bougie lifestyle with not a care in the world. Ironically, though, it is through Katherine’s eyes that the horrors of London’s class system are revealed. Trying to find information about her father’s would-be killer, Katherine finds herself regularly travelling to the Gut, eventually befriending an apprentice Engineer who witnessed the attack. But in the Gut, life is very different. It’s not just a life of hard labour and smoke - petty criminals and the aforementioned ‘refugees’ are tasked with working dangerous and sickening jobs like managing the city’s sewage. And by that, I mean ‘harvesting literal faeces to be converted into food and fuel’. The foreman overseeing their work admits they feed such criminals nothing else. And he has the gall to be annoyed that they keep dying of diseases like cholera and typhoid! These people are denied medical care, denied treatment, denied even basic food other than being told to literally eat sh*t. And when they inevitably die? They get sent to the Engineerium to be turned into robotic zombies that can never get sick, tired or unhappy. And, eventually, they’ll be put right back to work. The crimes these criminals did to deserve this, remember, include petty theft, criticising the Lord Mayor, and living aboard a town that got eaten. The foreman literally cannot fathom why Katherine would care about these people’s wellbeing - after all, they’re just criminals. The Engineerium’s end goal in all this is, again, to staff the entire lower tiers with robot zombie workers who will never grow tired, get sick, complain or protest their lot in life, and will never disobey orders, and just enough human overseers to keep things running smoothly ... because that’s what these people are worth to London, cheap, unending labour. Katherine can’t even bring herself to tell her high-class peers about what she learned down there, because it’s such a different world that they would never empathise, much less care. Again, slave labour is common in this world, especially child slavery - Brighton runs on it to maintain its image as a floating Caligula’s Palace, and in Arkangel slavery is so normal that we watch a rich man beat a slave nearly to death for the crime of bumping into him. In the second book, we see the logical end-point of this. Anchorage’s social structure has completely fallen apart due to a plague in recent years that turned to once-proud ice city into a ghost town manned only by a skeleton crew. The margravine, Freya, is only 14, but with her parents dead, she finds herself in charge of the whole city. She has no household staff, apart from Smew, who finds himself constantly juggling outfits to adopts the roles of steward, chamberlain and so on. His official role before the plague was ... erm ... the Dwarf. He was there in a manner similar to a court jester, for the amusement of the margrave due to being a little person. But the head navigator is just ... the woman who kept the maps. The head engineer is going half-mad, seeing his dead son staring at him from the shadows, and the only reason the town’s still going is because his systems are the best on the ice and can mostly run on automatic. They have no doctor. The only other people of consequence in Anchorage are the Aakiuqs, the Inuit couple who run the air-harbour. The common workers of Anchorage number in the mere dozens. And yet, because they’re so fixated on their traditions, nobody will drop the formalities and just admits that they’re trying to uphold a class system that doesn’t work anymore. No, that’s not quite right - everybody realises it’s pointless to maintain the artifice of Anchorage’s social heirarchy, but nobody wants to be the first one to say it out loud. Much like Municipal Darwinism, nobody want to address the elephant in the room, that the system is broken and that people hold onto it because it’s comfortable in the face of uncertainty. Only in Anchorage’s darkest hour, when everything has been turned upside down and the conquerors are on their doorsteps, do the agree to drop the formalities, drop the artifice of class, and address each other as people, say what they think, and work to save what they have left. And of course, there’s the racism in the world. Life on mobile cities has made cultures smaller and more insular, considering we mainly see this series from the point of view of culturally-English towns. Throughout the first book there is a clear west vs east divide - the Traction Cities are generally English-speaking or multicultural enough that English will get you by. The Anti-Tractionist League, meanwhile, are south or east Asian, or else African, and are commonly understood to be ‘those brown people’. The only ethnically white Anti-Tractionists are from ‘Spitzbergen’ (likely Scandinavia/Finland and northwest Russia) and Hester Shaw’s family, and the latter lived on a town that floated out to an island and gave up running from predators forever. The way Tom reacts to this attitude calls to mind the way racists might refer to ‘race traitors’. There’s even an in-universe slur for people who live in static settlements; ‘Mossies’, because ‘a rolling town gathers no moss’. However, when Tom is taken to Shan Guo itself, he realises that all the propaganda he’d been fed his whole like is exactly that - propaganda. Shan Guo is described as beautiful - an endless patchwork of rolling fields and farms, colourful, bright, vibrant, heaving with life and energy. The Anti-Tractionists aren’t vicious savages, they’re just ... people. Tom can’t understand it at first. He wonders how people can live without the hum of engines or the vibrations of deckplates - he subconsciously equates city life with, well, life, and the absence of that makes him uneasy. But he can also see this culture before him, thousands of years old, outlasting even the end of the world, and he realises there is another way. The next time he sees London, he sees it from outside, from the side of the hunted, and he realises it’s not beautiful or efficient, just dirty, and huge, wrapped in its own waste smoke and driven only by destruction. For the rest of the series, even with the rise of the radicalised Green Storm (Anti-Tractionists Lv2), large Traction Cities are consistently the enemy. Tractionism as a culture is understood to only represent imperialism, destruction, and consumption, literally and figuratively.

SCIENCES SANS FRONTIERES

It should be noted that science and technology are not universally reviled by the series. As a dieselpunk series, a certain degree of technology is fundamental to the series existence. But this is a very different world than the one we know. On the one hand, engines exist that can drive entire cities. On the other, computers basically do not exist. The rare few that still exist are not in working condition, and nobody knows how to restore them. Heavier-than-aircraft don’t really exist - the third book introduces some, but they’re small, experimental ... barely more than short-range toys designed for flashy air shows but not real travel. The main form of personal locomotion in this world is by airship, and this world’s airships are far beyond anything we’ve made in our time. But lost technologies are heavily associated with the hubris and destructiveness of the Ancients. Until now. Like I said, the most powerful Guild in London is the Engineers’ Guild. And they got that way under the leadership of now-Lord Mayor Magnus Crome. It should be noted that Crome genuinely loves his city and wants it to survive no matter the cost. But under Crome, the Engineers began to dabble in sciences considered unethical to downright taboo. Most notable is the MEDUSA Project. Through Thaddeus Valentine, London came into possession of an energy weapon from the SMW ... and, more importantly, the working computer that runs the thing. In terms of Darwinist Evolution, this is like giving a monkey a gun and teaching it how to use it. MEDUSA exhibits a level of power no other force on Earth can match, and London is forced to deploy it early in a crisis. Originally, the plan was to march up to Batmunkh Gompa, the Shield-Wall that represents the only break in the mountains around Shan Guo big enough to permit a city, and blast it to cinders. Unfortunately, London attracts the attention of a bigger, hungrier city about halfway there, and is forced to fire MEDUSA at it to save its own skin. The sheer terror of what that weapon represents is revealed then. Panzerstadt-Bayreuth was the fusion of four massive cities, each one bigger and more powerful than London. MEDUSA killed it dead in one stroke - the energy beam set the entire city ablaze and ignited its fuel stores. Her engines nearly immediately exploded. When the fires go down enough for an Engineer scout ship to investigate, the people had been almost flashed into glass. The flash of light from the attack is so bright that, hundreds of miles to the south, Tom and Hester see the sky light up like a new dawn. The people of London are relieved, of course, that they didn’t all die that night, but more than that the entire city become suffused with the excitement of just how easy it would be to kill ... well, anyone they like, really. London doesn’t even stop to devour Panzerstadt-Bayreuth, as the Engineers can’t afford for the Shield-Wall to prepare for their arrival. Appropriately, and karmically, the finale has an accident lock down the computer lock down, with MEDUSA unable to fire but unable to stop gathering energy, and London melts under the heat of MEDUSA’s glare. But that wasn’t the only scientific sin committed by London’s engineers. I’ve already mentioned London trying to repurpose faeces as food, but we need to talk more about the Stalkers. Stalkers are kinda like discount Cybermen from Doctor Who - dead bodies, threaded with weird old machines and coated in armour, their brains hooked up to simple computers. Originally conceived as soldiers, they were believed long dead. However, one survived to the modern by sheer survivor instinct - Shrike. Through negotiations that are not the purview of this essay, he allowed the Engineers of London to take him apart and figure out how he worked, and hoo boy they did. The Engineers figured out how to manufacture their own Stalkers. The first batch are used as law enforcement like the Worst Robocops, but, again, the plan was to have Stalker workers all over Low London. Katherine, learning this, likens it to London ‘being a city of the dead’ (Apprentice Engineer Pod, to whom she is talking, grimly notes that the Deep Gut Prison is so awful, so callous with human life, that it already feels like that). Logically, the end-point of this idea is to have all workers in London be the resurrected dead, with just enough living to keep things in order ... oh, and they’d all be loyal to the Engineers, because remember, no Freedom of Speech here, and you can be sent to do the worst form of prison labour for dissenting against the Lord Mayor. With Crome being both Lord Mayor and Head Engineer at once, the Engineers’ creed is as good as law - traditionally, London Lord Mayors forsook their former Guild allegiances to show their representation of all of London, and Crome’s refusal to do that caused a bit of a stir. The Engineers are also keen to arm their security teams with some form of energy pistols, despite guns being outlawed in London and the police are only allowed crossbows. Crome’s rationale is the same as every two-bit mad scientist villain, of course - that science should not be held back by moral restrictions, and that progress for progress’ sake is essential for London’s survival. Really, it’s the Engineer’s survival, as they’re rather loathe to share these advancements except to exert power on those around. London isn’t the only example of technology being used to leverage control and benefit the ruling classes. Grimsby is a sunken wreck of a city somewhere in the north Atlantic, yet due to a complex series of airlocks the interior of the city is a secret hideaway of the Lost Boys, a society of children stolen from aquatic towns and trained to be thieves under the watchful eye of the mysterious Uncle. They will then take submarine walkers, attach to passing towns, steal whatever tools, fuel, food and riches they can carry, and vanish back into the depths. Uncle, naturally, takes the lion’s share of the haul. But Uncle maintains his power by careful access to technology, only letting the Boys have what they need and juggling the power structure by choosing team leaders, and punishing insubordination harshly and publicly. Uncle sees and hears everything in Grimsby with his surveillance network, and can address any give Boy in a heartbeat, training the Boys to never expect privacy from him, so that when he demands a progress update from a mission, they never question him. He rewards Boys who do well on burglaries, but more importantly than that, he chooses team leaders according to apparently inscrutable whims. The Boys believe it’s a mark of favour from Uncle, and thus social status, to be trusted with the limpet command and all the tech that comes with. Really, Uncle carefully give command to people he can trust to remain loyal to him, even if that means passing over a more talented Boy who might get a bit uppity. Even in a more mundane way, higher status in the Lost Boys means you can move closer to the heart of Grimsby, where you’re less likely to wake up and find your bedroom wasn’t as watertight as you thought and flooded in the night. Uncle, naturally, doesn’t care if a few Boys drown, so long as he doesn’t lose anything useful. Technology, and in particular access to unusual technology, is the dimension on which power is really decided.

THE END OF AN ERA

We’ve already established that this world is not a sustainable one. There are only so many cities. The inherent entropy of Municipal Darwinism is really showing. Once upon a time, big cities could ‘reproduce’, creating little satellite towns that could grow and become independent - even London had some - but those are no more. In a greedy desperation to keep moving, the predators are not reproducing, and static settlements can’t spread and grow fast enough to count there. The attack of London, and MEDUSA, turned staunch opposition into outright war, with the Green Storm being willing to doublethink their way into using the weapons of the Traction Cities in their fight to stop the Traction Cities, even recruiting ex-London Engineers to make weapons and stalkers for them, and eventually even seeking out another ancient superweapon - an orbital laser called ODIN - without a hint of irony. The Green Storm eventually face internal resistance, from Anti-Tractionists who disagree with the outright terrorism angle, and eventually crumbles. The last great Traction Cities stop. The last mobile city is New London, no longer a hunter but a trade platform, and even that probably stopped hovering about at some point. The ending is told by the great survivor, Shrike, who has cheated Death again and again, who outlived Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw, Valentine, Magnus Crome, and a thousand other heroes and villains. When he awakes, long in the future, Traction Cities are not even ancient history. They’re a dream, a fantasy, too incredible to be true. But Shrike remembers, and he teaches people the story of London and Anchorage, Arkangel and Airhaven, Brighton and Harrowbarrow. Did they learn the right message from Shrike’s story? Did they learn that ruthless imperialism is like hunting faster than the food can come back, and that you will starve before you have everything you ever wanted? Did they learn that hoarding resources, gatekeeping knowledge, will lead to ruin? Did they learn, or will the repeat the same mistakes of the greed and gluttony of the Traction Era? Well, who knows.

[mahvaladara]

Shah talks Psi - The beneficial effects of giving your kid nightmares

You know how people say children shouldn’t see certain shows because it’ll give them nightmares?

I only partially agree and disagree of this statement.

As a therapist I stand my ground that children SHOULD be allowed to have nightmares. 

NIGHTMARES. Not night terrors, there’s a difference. A nightmare is a concrete dream the person remembers and can be discussed and deconstructed with the child. A night terror is a constant, insidious and persistent nightmare that the child may or may not remember, though most often the latter and therefore can not be broken down.

What do I mean with deconstruct a nightmare? Read on.

As a child, I loved movies. I grew up with Stallone, Van Dame, Seagal, Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee, Schwarzenegger and so on. I also grew up with the old school gory horror movies.

Three shows that I love but gave me nightmares as a child are, without a doubt, Robocop, Alien the 8th Passenger and yes, Jurassic Park. Now I am not saying you should let your child watch those movies. Robocop, especially the acid scene, is not a movie a kid should watch. HOWEVER, neither of those movies are that bad...

Most of today’s horrors movies aren’t that bad. I mean, you shouldn’t let your kid watch the Saw franchise, what form of sick fuck are you? But Anabelle? Pffft. Ouija (if anything maybe the kid grows to avoid those toys, like... for fuck sake mate!)? Sure. Aliens? Yup. Predator? That’s more of an action flick. Let’s see... 

The Conjuring scares me, and it will scare you kid shitless. It will give them nightmares for weeks. They are going to start locking their bloody closets at night XD. The Bye Bye Man, the Others, Us. Get out. 

Troll: But that’s going to give my kid nightmares!

Yes. And thank god it does. It means your kid’s brain is working correctly.

When it’s night terrors and constant everyday nightmares, then it is bad, something is failing. Either you have not broken down the “nightmare” correctly or something else entirely is scaring your kid. 

My mother used to think my night terrors were caused by movies before she found out I was actually terrified of school because of my teacher’s physical abuse towards me. She removed the movies from my life, but the night terrors persisted all the way until I left that school (hope that teacher burns in hell).

A child having a nightmare every now and then it’s actually beneficial for them.

Nightmares have a very important role in emotional organization, emotional management and brain development. Nightmares are basically dreams, but dreams that are organizing negative concepts. Dreams that are organizing the concept of ghosts, death, blood, the concept of fear, anger. But also, and this is important, the concept of fiction, of security and above all, DISBELIEF. 

It is okay for a child to EVERY NOW AND THEN watch a horror movie. A horror movie with a plot and preferably a good ending. A good resolution to the horror movie, like they kill or destroy the demon, is very important. Why? Closure. It tells the child, this terrifying thing existed in fiction and could be defeated. 

But, the child must not watch the movie alone. It is important the parent is with the child, it can be at night, but the parent must be with the child. Because what’s going to happen is that that kid is going to ask questions, questions the parent must answer, question the parent must deconstruct. And at night, that kid is going to wake up crying that there’s the Conjuring Witch inside their closet. 

What must the parent do at this point?

Deconstruct.

Basically the parent must break down the child’s fear, explain the notion of fiction, look for the child’s fear, show it is not real, or offer a solution. Lock the closet door, turn on the nightlight, offer to sleep with them. These are ways to break the fear, and offer security. 

Troll: But isn’t it best to avoid this?

No. It isn’t. Because a child who does not have nightmares has a much worse skill at managing negative emotions. And a child who does not have nightmares, has night terrors. Because, as the brain is being literally prevented from organizing these negative emotions, it goes a-wire and doesn’t know what the fuck it is supposed to do.

Children who don’t have nightmares, are more prone to night terror, to emotional management dificulties, to outbursts and tantrums.

Nightmares helps them organize in a safe environment negative emotions, such as fear, anger and frustration. And it is very important a child know how to act with fearful things. 

I advise you watch Black Mirror episode “Arkangel”, I think it shows perfectly the effects of painting the world pink for children and not allowing them to experience and organize their bad dreams, their bad emotions.

So. What should you do?

There’s a horror movie on TV or Netflix. Google the plot. Watch the movie on your own, and then make your own judgement if it’s really that bad.

Would I let my kid watch Alien, the 8th Passenger? I’d let them watch the entire franchise actually. Would I let them watch Saw? Nope. The Conjuring? The Walking Dead? Evil Dead? Yes. Sinister? Drag me to Hell? Nope.

Depends on your own suspension of disbelief. How real is this fear? And above all, does it have a good ending? 

Horror movies with good endings? A-okay.

Gorefests, “bedisturbed” movies, and bad endings. Nope.

Basically use your common sense. You’re not about to watch the Human Centepide with your mother. But an X-Files marathon is awesome.

Last, but not least. It is important that, while the kid is watching and even if he has nightmares you explain to a child the notion of Fiction.

Children don’t have the capability of looking at a movie and seeing that as fiction, to them, those movies are real. All shows are real, when I was five I thought Lara Croft was a real woman. After I realized what was shown in games wasn’t real, I thought she was inspired on a real person, and eventually I was taught the notion of fictional characters.

Now, children cannot look at a movie and flat out realize nothing of that is real. The adult must explain that the Alien in the movies is a guy in a suit that happens to have very elongated arms. 

Basically.

Nightmares are necessary evils for our emotional development.

And use your common sense.

Someone once told me: 

“Raise your child the best you can, for regardless of what you do, you’ll be doing it wrong.”

So, my advice is do the best you can and don’t be so worried of shielding your child from all the dangers of Media. Children are not idiots, and if you sit down with your child and explain to them what they just watched or are about to, they themselves, will eventually form their own opinions and decisions about what they want to watch or not. 

So, rest assured that your kid accidentally watching Vin Diesal fly over a truck in a car, or Steven Seagal breaking a guy’s arm, or Sam and Dean being ragdolled by a demon, is not going to “traumatize” them. It might give them nightmares, but they will, most likely, be fine.

Fiction is different from reality and that is something important for them to understand.

This was Shah. I am done here.

[just-a-libearian]

Predator’s Gold

Story Summary: In Philip Reeve’s second book of his Hungry City Chronicles, Hester and Tom have been safely travelling for two years in the Jenny Haniver before a rebel, aviator force called the Green Storm attacks. Hester and Tom end up landing on Anchorage, a city recovering from plague, scavenged by thieves, and travelling to the barren land of America in a last ditch effort to rebuild and escape from the pursuing suburb, Arkangel. Rating: ★★★★★ A sequel that builds off of the first book’s imaginative world and likable flawed characters by expanding on both with creative craftiness. Philip Reeve’s site Spoiler free review below.

Praise: -starts with a great opening paragraph that reels in the reader and introduces a new character and city effectively -the 2 year time skip from the first book keeps things interesting story wise and makes things feel more realistic. It develops Hester and Tom’s relationship in a way that wouldn’t work without a time skip, especially for a character like Hester who doesn’t know how to be vulnerable with others -I’m usually bored and annoyed with love triangles, but Reeve pulls off one that has easily traceable character motivations behind them. Tom and Freya being drawn towards one another  and Hester’s reaction makes perfect sense. Tom associates Freya with history and cities, something that he’s starved for and Hester can’t understand or provide for him. Freya, similarly, is desperate and lonely in her devastated city and starving for companionship, so when a boy her age who’s passionate and kind comes along, of course she’s drawn to him. Hester’s jealousy and reaction is sad and twisted and real because she knows she can’t be those things for Tom and hates herself and others for it, and she lashes out in the most Hester way possible -I’ve said this in my first review, but the characters are actually flawed. Sometimes you come across characters that are too perfect or too evil, but Reeve’s characters are the perfect middle ground that show we can have likable protagonists that are good people with evil thoughts that lead to evil actions. In the first book Tom is naive (a flaw, sure, but kind of an overused one), but in this second book you see him act on selfish desires and think cruel thoughts. It adds some spice to the Tom we met in the first book. Freya is a spoiled, pompous home-wrecker, but more than that she’s a young, grieving girl who’s had the responsibility of rebuilding a potentially dying city thrown on her shoulders in a short time. We already know Hester is broken, harsh, and bitter from the first book, but after two years you hope she’s softened a bit. She does, because of her love for Tom, but not as much as you’d expect. She makes some decisions and pulls stunts that only villains pull in other young adult books, and it’s so so refreshing to see a protagonist this flawed while still owning the reader’s heart. These characters each have honorable strengths and relatable weaknesses that break away from archetypal norms -Caul and his thieving group add a lot of world building to the series. There’s much more to “look at” after we learn more about him and his origins, and you feel just how vast and developed Reeve’s world Critiques: -this is just one line, but it’s a line that pulled me out of the book, made me stop, and question my reading comprehension. A line, in the climax, about Hester killing a person and how she “had never killed anyone before.” I could have sworn she shot a bolt through a person’s skull 2 pages before, and I always had the feeling before that that she’s killed people to survive. I flipped back a few pages, reread the part about Hester shooting someone in the head, and wondered if I’m really missing something here or someone forgot to edit that bit out... Book 1: Mortal Engines Review Book 3: Infernal Devices Review Book 4: A Darkling Plain Review Despite the obvious misrepresentation of Hester’s scar, I’m excited for the movie to come out in December. Let me know what you think!  

[mobilepubliclibraryteens]

Return to the world of Mortal Engines in this new book of short stories about the rebellious young aviatrix, Anna Fang, illustrated by Ian McQue. A key character in the Mortal Engines book and upcoming film produced by Peter Jackson (December 2018), this is your chance to learn more of Anna's thrilling past. Night Flights includes Traction City, Philip Reeve's 2011 World Book Day Book. In a dangerous future world where gigantic, motorized cities attack and devour each other, London hunts where no other predator dares. But Anna Fang -- pilot, adventurer, spy -- isn't afraid. The three stories show gripping, moving, exciting moments in Anna Fang's life: her childhood as a slave aboard the moving city Arkangel, a showdown against a robotic Stalker that is terrifyingly out of control, and her free life as an intelligence agent for the Anti-Traction league ...

[lovemychinchilla]

How to Give a Chinchilla a Bath

All animals need to keep clean. Pet chinchillas are no exception. But how can you wash a chinchilla if their fur can’t get wet? 

How do chinchillas bathe? They need to roll around in fine dust to prevent greasy fur, and don’t need soap or water. To bathe your chinchilla, place it in a sand bath with 1 cup of chinchilla bathing dust. It will first groom its whiskers and face, before rolling around without need of help. Allow your pet to bathe once every two or three days.  

Learning how to give a chinchilla a dust bath is easy. Follow our step by step guide below, and read our must-know chinchilla bathing FAQs, and you won’t go wrong.

Do Chinchillas Need Baths? 

Chinchillas need to keep clean like all other animals. Good hygiene and clean fur help animals by:

Preventing parasites, or at least stopping infestations from getting out of control

Preventing skin infections from bacteria in the fur and on the skin

Stopping the animal from smelling strongly, so it’s less easily sniffed out by predators or its prey

Chinchillas need to stay clean even more than other animals. They have such thick fur that it could easily get, and stay, greasy and dirty. They keep clean by taking baths and by grooming themselves and each other.

Can Chinchillas Have a Water Bath? 

So, given that wild chinchillas need to bathe, you likely imagine them rolling around in puddles or shallow streams. But do chinchillas like water, and how do chinchillas clean themselves?

Few animals bathe like people do. If a chinchilla were to immerse itself in water in the wild, it would get sick. That's because they struggle to get dry.

The problem is that a chinchilla’s fur is so thick. When it gets wet, the fur holds onto the water. It can take so long that a chinchilla’s fur can develop a fungal infection. It would also make the chinchilla colder in the subzero temperatures of the mountainous Andes, so wild chinchillas only bathe with dust. While it is possible to bathe a chinchilla in water safely at home, it's not necessary except in extreme circumstances (e.g. if a chinchilla has been severely neglected and has poop matted into its fur).

But how do chinchillas clean themselves if they can’t bathe in water?

How Can You Wash a Chinchilla?

[caption id="attachment_3568" align="alignright" width="300"] Chinchillas bathe in dust rather than water.[/caption]

Rather than bathe in water, chinchillas bathe in dust. This might sound silly: if you bathed in dust, you would feel dirtier than you did to begin with. But it works for chinchillas, and lots of other animals too.

A wild chinchilla will first find a small pile of volcanic dust, or failing that, sand. It will then roll around vigorously in it. It will flip onto its back, then back onto its front. It will pause for a second before rolling again. It will kick its legs to raise up some dust, too. It will carry on until its back and sides are covered thickly in dust.

This is similar to using talc to stop yourself from sweating. The talc (or in this case, the dust) prevents moisture and catches grease. This helps your chinchilla stay clean without getting wet. 

This applies if you have a pet chinchilla, too. It's best not to let your chinchilla get wet, as it can’t dry easily. This also means you can’t use shampoo on your chinchilla’s fur, but your pet can still stay clean in other ways.

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How Do I Clean My Chinchilla’s Fur (Step by Step)

This means that if you have a pet chinchilla, you need to give it dust baths.

You can’t leave dust on the floor of its cage. Instead, you need to use a small bowl or make a pen for your chinchilla to bathe in. You must let it roll around in dust inside frequently. 

Step 1: Buy a Chinchilla Sandbath

[caption id="attachment_3868" align="alignright" width="300"] Image courtesy Arkangel, CC by SA 2.0.[/caption]

You need something to hold your chinchilla’s dust in. They roll around vigorously when they bathe, so putting the dust on newspaper will mean that it spreads onto the floor. You need something to contain it like a bowl, bucket or plastic tub. 

The tub doesn’t need to be big. But it needs enough room for your chinchilla to roll onto its back. So, around twice the size of your chinchilla or bigger is fine. You don’t need a bath that’s specifically made for chinchillas, either; any tub that’s big enough is fine.

When it’s time for your chinchilla to have a bath, you set the tub up with the dust inside it. You then take the chinchilla from its enclosure and let it roll around in the bath.

If your chinchilla has a pen, place the bath in the pen. Put it somewhere that your chinchilla can hop in and out of it on its own. Place newspaper underneath the bath to collect any dust that your chinchilla spreads around.

Put the bath somewhere far away from the enclosure. If the bath is close, the dust gets into the air and settles on your chinchilla’s bedding and cage enrichments. This can cause or exacerbate eye issues.

Step 2: Buy Chinchilla Bathing Dust

Chinchillas can’t use any kind of dust to bathe in. But aside from that, there are still lots of disagreements over what kind of dust or sand to use. There are several brands of dust available, including Blue Cloud, Blue Sparkle, Oxbow, Kaytee, and Sunseed. 

One thing owners argue about is how fine a dust to use. The finer the dust, the more it billows into clouds when the chinchilla rolls around. But when dust is fine, it wicks moisture and grease better. That’s why sand isn’t recommended. 

Rather than rely on one particular brand, rely on your own knowledge. Here is a list of the substances known to work well, and not to harm chinchillas:

Volcanic pumice. This is what products like Kaytee’s Chinchilla Bath Sand are made from. 

Sepiolite. Sepiolite is a kind of clay, also known as meerschaum. Like volcanic ash, it's very fine.

Both volcanic pumice and sepiolite are fine powders. You need the powder to be fine, otherwise it won't stick to the fur and get rid of any grease.

If your chinchilla has never dusted before, you may need to try a couple different brands until you find one it likes. 

Step 3: How Much Chinchilla Bathing Dust to Use? 

Your chinchilla doesn’t need much dust to bathe. All it needs is enough to cover its fur, so the dust doesn’t need to be deep. 

1 cup of dust in a normal sized bathing tub is enough for your chinchilla.

Try this amount if you’re bathing two chinchillas at once. It may be slightly too little, so add another half a cup if it seems necessary. Line the bottom of the bath/tub with dust and spread it so that it’s even.

Step 4: Help Your Chinchilla Bathe 

Then, take your chinchilla from its cage. If your chinchilla’s cage has a gate, open it. Otherwise, you may need to pick your chinchilla up by its tail. 

When your chinchilla sees its dust bath, it will likely try to hop in on its own. Chinchillas enjoy dust baths, so you won’t need to encourage your pet to bathe. 

Before it starts rolling around, your chinchilla will groom itself. It will clean its face and whiskers with its forepaws. If your chin has a cage-mate, it may barber it and be barbered back too. 

Once your chinchilla is in its dust bath, leave it alone. It will roll around on its own. You won’t need to rub it, scrub it, or brush its fur. If the sides of the tub or bath are low enough, then it will get out on its own too. 

Step 5: Reuse Chinchilla Dust Bath Dust

You can reuse the dust your chinchilla bathes in. Dust doesn’t get dirty like bathwater does. Some clings to your pet’s fur, and absorbs moisture. But the rest is still clean.

So, when your chinchilla is finished rolling around, you have options. If the tub has a lid you can attach, get rid of any poop your chinchilla may have left behind, then put the lid back on. Save the dust for the next time your pet has to bathe.

If the bath doesn’t have a lid, you could pour the dust into a container that does. If you don’t, the dust could spill onto the ground or blow around and settle on your things. Because it’s so fine, it can be an irritant, too. 

You can use the dust until it starts to look grainy. The grainier it gets, the more moisture it has absorbed. The more moisture the dust contains, the less it can clean your pet’s fur. 

(FAQs) 1: Do Chinchillas Need Dust Baths?

Chinchillas need to bathe somehow. If they don’t, they get greasy. They aren’t as pleasant to pet or handle when greasy and dirty.

But more importantly, bathing is good for your pet’s well-being. You see this all the time with exotic pets: they like to perform natural behaviors. If they don’t, they become stressed out or unhappy. That happens to chinchillas which aren’t allowed to bathe, too.

If you’re worried about your pet’s dust bath being lots of effort, don’t be. While the dust can be hard to sweep up, you can:

Set newspaper down so that it doesn’t get on the floor

Put the pen/bath in a room that doesn’t need to stay too clean, e.g. the garage

Keep a lid on the bath when it’s not in use, so the dust won’t spread

If this still sounds like too much effort for you, then a chinchilla isn’t your ideal pet. 

2: How Often Do You Bathe a Chinchilla?

Chinchillas need to bathe regularly. Their fur coats are important for keeping them warm in cold mountain climates. So, you need to let your pet bathe once every three days. 

Any less often, and your pet’s fur would become greasy and dirty. Any more often, and your pet could develop eye problems. These occur when your pet frequently gets dust in its eyes. 

This shouldn’t be an issue. If you have a tub with tall enough sides, the dust won’t fly everywhere. So, you won’t have to clean. And you should be taking your chinchilla out of its enclosure regularly for play anyway. 

Because your chinchilla has to bathe regularly, you may want to leave the dust bath in its cage. But if you did that, two things would happen:

The dust would get dirty, so you would have to change it frequently anyway

Your chinchilla would likely get too much dust in its eyes

So, this isn’t a good idea. Only bathe your chinchilla in a separate bath or tub. 

3: How Long Should You Bathe a Chinchilla For? 

If a chinchilla doesn’t bathe for long enough, its fur won’t be properly cleaned. And if it bathes for too long, your pet can get too much dust in its eyes.

Breeders and experienced owners recommend 15-20 minutes of bathing time. This is more than long enough for your pet to get its fur clean. That being said, your pet may need to bathe for longer:

If you handle your chinchilla frequently, it will need more bathing. That’s because the grease/sweat from your hands gets into your pet’s fur.

Some chinchillas have greasier fur than others. These chinchillas need to bathe for longer.

Also, some chinchillas don’t want to bathe for that long. You may notice that your pet gets bored after a minute or two. If that’s the case, don’t worry. Your chinchilla knows how long it has to bathe to get clean. 

Keep track of the amount of time your chinchilla bathes for with a clock, or an alarm on your smartphone. Then, when the time is up, gently encourage your pet out of its bath. You may need to pick it up by the base of the tail to do so. 

4: Can You Bathe Several Chinchillas at Once?

[caption id="attachment_3766" align="alignright" width="300"] Image courtesy Bedinek, CC by SA 4.0. Chinchillas that are good friends can bathe together![/caption]

Chinchillas should live in pairs, otherwise they become lonely. You can save time on bathing by allowing them to bathe together. Provided that the pair know each other and are bonded already, they won’t fight. 

  If you want the chinchillas to bathe together, you’ll need a larger tub. There should be space enough for both chinchillas to sit in the tub, plus extra room for them to roll over. Not having enough space would encourage the pair to fight.

5: Why Do Chinchillas Go the Toilet in Their Dust Baths?

Chinchillas urinate to scent mark. For that reason, your chinchilla may go to the toilet in its bath. They will do this when they’re finished bathing so that the urine doesn’t get in their fur coats. Your chin may also poop in its dust bath after it’s done bathing, too.

Chinchillas which don’t do this may start doing it when:

You use a scented kind of dust for your chinchilla to bathe in

Multiple chinchillas use the same dust

Another chinchillas has gone to the toilet in the dust, and it has been reused

If your pet wees in its dust bath, you’ll have to throw the dust away. It won’t dry, especially if it’s fine dust. And even if it did dry, it would still smell bad. You must also wash the dust bath. 

But if your chinchilla poops in its dust bath, you can still reuse it. Pick the poop out with a tissue, as well as any damp or dirty dust. Replace the small amount of disposed dust, and allow your chin to bathe in it next time it needs a bath. 

6: What to Do If Your Chinchilla Doesn’t Bathe

Some chinchillas take to bathing easier than others. That’s because chinchillas learn how to bathe from their parents. It isn’t an instinct. If your chin was separated from its parents too early, it may never have learned.

The best thing to do is expose your chinchilla to a dust bath regularly anyway. If it has a cage-mate, it may see its friend rolling in the dust and do so as well. It might at least get some dust on itself from the dust in the air.

If your chinchilla still doesn’t learn how to roll, powder it with a little dust when you’re petting it. While this isn’t as good as your chinchilla bathing, it’s better than nothing. 

You could also gently push your pet onto its side or its back in the dust bath. Be careful, as chinchillas have a delicate skeletal structure. But once your pet knows what it feels like to be roll in dust, it will do so itself.

Below, you can find our chinchilla quiz, new posts for further reading, and a signup for our Chinchilla Newsletter!

[ays_quiz id='9']

Ready for more homework? Why not read this next?

#chinchillas #chinchillacare #handling #hygiene

[everytechever]

Philippine Teams Dominate Predator League 2022 Championship

Philippine teams FTW at the Asia Pacific Predator League 2022! #APacPredatorLeague2022 #Predator #PUBG #Dota2 #PolarisEsports #GrindSkyEsports #TNCPredator #Execration #ArkAngelPredator #ItLiesWithin #EveryTechEver

The Asia Pacific (APac) Predator League 2022 is coming in guns blazing to bring a world-class event to the land of the rising sun. The best Dota 2 and PUBG teams are gathered in Tokyo to earn the right to call themselves the kings of the region. 6,600 teams registered from 15 different countries and only the best remain to duke it out for the lion’s share of the $400,000 prize pool. Dota 2…

[magtira]

Predator League PUBG winners bared; ‘Thronos’ gaming chair unveiled

Predator League PUBG winners bared; ‘Thronos’ gaming chair unveiled

By Vernon Mikhail Radovan

The Predator League came to a conclusion on Sunday, January 27, at the Glorietta Activity Center where a total of 16 teams competed for 12 rounds of PlayerUnknown’s Battle Grounds (PUBG).

Members of the Arkangel team whoop it up after being declared champions

The gamers competed over P200,000 worth of total cash prizes and a chance to represent the Philippines…

[lovemychinchilla]

How to Hold a Chinchilla for The First Time

Picking up and holding a chinchilla isn’t like handling other kinds of pet. They’re delicate, so you need to learn the proper way to hold a chinchilla for the first time.

How do you handle chinchillas safely? From the side, not above, place a hand on your chinchilla’s front and another on its rear. Take a firm, but not pinchy, grasp of your pet’s tail and lift it. Support its front with your other hand if possible. You can then hold your chinchilla by supporting its feet from underneath with both hands.

You must lift your pet this way because it has free-floating ribs. A chinchilla doesn’t have a sternum, so if you lift one up by its middle, its ribs could damage its internal organs.

To learn more about lifting and handling a chinchilla for the first time (and especially handling without biting), read our guide below.

How to Hold a New Chinchilla

[caption id="attachment_3827" align="alignright" width="290"] Image courtesy Meagan Lloyd, CC by 2.0. Get your chinchilla to trust you, e.g. by feeding it, before trying to pick it up.[/caption]

Handling a chinchilla is easy, so long as you know how. To pick up a chinchilla, either lift it by the base of its tail, or allow it to hop onto your hand. Then, the proper way to hold a chinchilla is to support underneath its feet with both hands for maximum security.

At times it will sit still, in which case it’s easy to hold. Other times, it may want to move around, in which case you should continually pass your chinchilla from one hand to another. Bear in mind that a chinchilla which has never been handled before will be uncomfortable at first.

But holding a chinchilla for the first time is about more than picking it up. There are several steps you have to take before you can pick up a chinchilla for the first time:

Understand your chinchilla. Most chinchillas don’t like handling, and as an owner you have to understand why.

Get your chinchilla to trust you. Chinchillas naturally don’t trust people, so overcoming that is a must.

Picking your chinchilla up safely. You could easily hurt your chinchilla if you pick it up from the ground in the wrong way.

Holding your chinchilla safely. Once you’ve picked up your chinchilla, again, you could easily hurt it by dropping it or holding it wrong.

As such, this guide will touch on several issues in addition to ‘how to handle a chinchilla’.

Do Chinchillas Like Being Handled?

[caption id="attachment_3812" align="alignright" width="300"] Image courtesy Arkangel, CC by SA 2.0.[/caption]

Chinchillas don’t like being handled by people they don’t know. While other rodents don’t mind, chinchillas do. This is a source of frustration for new owners, because they look so cuddly, but you can’t cuddle them.

Over time, you can get your chinchillas used to handling. But this takes time and trust. You can’t force a chinchilla to like you, or being handled.

Why Don’t Chinchillas Like Being Handled?

There are many reasons why chinchillas don’t like being handled. If you think from your pet’s perspective, and learn more about them, this makes sense.

Chinchillas have delicate bones. Their ribs are thin and connected to the spine by cartilage. Through handling, you can break these connections and damage your chinchilla’s organs. Your chinchilla knows that it’s delicate.

You are much bigger than your chinchilla. All animals are nervous around animals much bigger than they are. You’re a threat, whether you want to be or not.

Your chinchilla will think you’re a predator. The only reason that another animal would touch a chinchilla is to eat it. So, your pet will think you’re a predator.

You don’t know your own strength. You can easily hurt your pet by accident.

If you’re handling your pet for the first time, it doesn’t trust you yet. It will be more comfortable with you later on.

New owners aren’t confident. When you handle your pet, you might shake and be nervous. Your pet will pick up on that.

The first three issues can never be corrected. But through learning more about your pet, and how to handle it, the latter three can be. That’s the purpose of this guide.

Do All Chinchillas Dislike Handling?

  [caption id="attachment_3585" align="alignright" width="200"] Image courtesy Anthony Sokolik, CC by SA 2.0. Some chinchillas don't like handling no matter what you do.[/caption]

New owners may not realize that chinchillas have personalities. Each chinchilla is different. Some are more ready to trust owners, and will let you handle them without you taming them.

Others have to be tamed over time. These won’t like you at first, but can grow to like you eventually. With patience and respect, you can handle them.

Others will always be skittish. They may never trust their owners. If that’s the case, you must respect your pet and allow it space. You can’t force it to like handling.

Your chinchilla’s personality is partly genetic and partly related to how it’s raised. If you treat a baby chinchilla (a kit) with respect and kindness, it will trust you more readily. But some won’t like handling no matter what you do.

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How to Get Your Chinchilla to Trust You

Before handling your chinchilla, you must get it to trust you. This isn’t something you can do overnight, so don’t expect immediate results. There are several things you can do to gain your pet’s trust.

The best way to do so is with your chinchilla outside of its cage. When it’s in its cage, if you come towards it, it will feel cornered.

Its ‘fight or flight’ reaction will kick in, and it may try to escape or bite you. So, let your pet out into your chinchilla-proofed room. Alternatively, put it in a play pen. In these spaces, your pet will be less afraid when you approach.

At all times, treat your pet with respect. Don’t force it to do things. If your chinchilla shies away from you, don’t chase after it, for example. Allow it to feel comfortable and over time it will like you.

Can You Force a Chinchilla to Be Handled?

Forcing a chinchilla to enjoy being handled is a bad idea. It is possible in a sense. Some owners tame their chinchillas by picking them up and not letting them go, no matter how much the pet doesn’t like it.

This will have unintended effects. On the one hand, your pet will get used to you. But you will also teach it that you can be cruel.

Besides that, a chinchilla that’s trying to escape will be in fight-or-flight mode, with adrenaline in its bloodstream. Too much adrenaline over time is bad for health (chronic stress).

And even if the chinchilla does stop struggling, that doesn’t mean it likes you. Rather, it gives up. It has learned to be helpless. That’s why you have to teach your chinchilla to trust you instead.

Make Sure Your Chinchilla Is Happy

Taming your chinchilla is impossible if it’s unhappy. A chinchilla kept in improper conditions is easily aggravated. It won’t want to spend time with you when in pain or stressed.

Also, if your chinchilla isn’t happy with its enclosure, it can get sick. A sick chinchilla doesn’t want to be handled because it feels vulnerable. When an animal is sick, it’s particularly vulnerable to predators.

So, before you do anything, check your pet’s enclosure. Read our care guides to ensure that your chinchilla is kept in the right conditions.

Let Your Chinchilla Sniff Your Hand

Chinchillas, like all rodents, have a sensitive sense of smell. They use this sense to navigate the world, and to understand what things are. They learn what a person’s smell is, and can recognize it.

So, to trust you, a chinchilla has to know what you smell like. With your pet outside of its cage, reach your hand towards it. At first, it may shy away or hide. If so, don’t force it to come towards you, or move yourself closer. Leave your hand there for a minute before moving it away.

After a few tries, your chinchilla will come to sniff you. It won’t immediately be comfortable with handling, but it will be less scared of you.

For best results, avoid having anything smelly on your hands like soap or perfume. You want your chinchilla to get used to your natural smell. Don’t do this in your pet’s cage, because it will feel cornered. Only do so with your chinchilla in your room or in a play pen.

Let Your Chinchilla Run Around on You

[caption id="attachment_3841" align="alignright" width="300"] Letting your chinchilla become comfortable outside its cage is a good idea.[/caption]

Once your chinchilla knows you, it will be comfortable around you. But it still won’t want to be handled. During this in between stage, it may climb around on your shoulders and along your arms. If it does so, let it.

This sounds easy, but chinchillas have tiny claws/nails which can be sharp. These can scratch bare skin. If they do, don’t react by yelping or moving quickly. This will make your chinchilla wary of you. Wear a thick sweater to prevent this.

Over time, this will get your chinchilla used to being on you. It likely still won’t be comfortable with being handled, but it will be soon.

How to Pick Up a Chinchilla

Picking up a chinchilla is easy once it trusts you, and if you know how. You must lift it up by its tail, not its middle, and by placing your hands around it rather than reaching from above. Once you’ve picked it up, you can support your pet by placing your hands underneath its feet. Then you can handle it, carefully, like you would any other pet.

Here’s a step by step guide which explains everything you have to do in detail.

1) Can You Hold a Chinchilla by The Tail?

Picking up a chinchilla by its tail is the method approved by all experienced owners.

This may seem both unusual and cruel. People who own pet rodents will tell you that this is a bad way to pick them up, and they’re right. If you do this to other rodents, you can hurt them, and even break their backs.

Chinchillas, though, are different. You can hold them by the bases of their tails with no risk of this happening. Furthermore, this method avoids the problem of lifting your chinchilla by its middle (as we’ll come to in a moment).

To lift your chinchilla by its tail, this is what you have to do.

Sit near your chinchilla and observe it. Ensure that it’s comfortable in your presence. If it isn’t, your chinchilla doesn’t trust you yet.

Move your hands towards your chinchilla. Do so from underneath rather than from above.

Collect your chinchilla with one hand around its front, and one around its rear. 

Take a firm, but not pinchy, grasp of your chinchilla’s tail. Lift your chinchilla by its tail while keeping your other hand close underneath your chinchilla’s other end.

This is what most owners do to move their chinchillas around. So, for example, if you have to put your chinchilla back in its cage, this is how you would do it. The first time you do so, your chinchilla may struggle, but remain calm if it does. After repeated handling, your chin won’t mind so much.

However, holding your pet chinchilla by the tail for a long time isn’t a good idea. That’s because your chinchilla won’t enjoy being held like this for a long time. Your pet can only dangle helplessly, so will want to get back on its feet. Also, you won’t enjoy holding your chinchilla like this for a long time. You can’t cuddle your chinchilla, hold it close or play with it when holding it like this.

Rather, this is intended as a way to quickly pick up a chinchilla without causing it harm. Once you’ve picked your chinchilla up, you can begin to handle it.

2) Can You Hold a Chinchilla by The Middle?

Holding a chinchilla by its middle is a bad idea unless you know what you’re doing.

If you are going to hold your chinchilla by the middle, don’t let your chinchilla balance all of its weight on your hand/s there. What this means is that you can hold a chinchilla by its middle, but not if you’re supporting its whole weight.

The issue with doing so is related to your chinchilla’s ribs. Chinchillas have delicate ribs that are mostly made of cartilage. Cartilage isn't as solid as bone; it's more flexible, so your pet's ribs can more easily bend. This can crush your pet's ribs. They are also thin enough that they can easily snap and puncture your chinchilla's lungs or other organs.

However, this isn’t an issue if you are supporting your chinchilla underneath its feet. It’s only an issue if you pick your chinchilla up off the ground, putting all of its weight into your hands holding its middle. Allowing your pet to scamper about in your hands is no problem.

3) Distract Your Pet

When holding a chinchilla for the first time, keep it distracted. If your pet has a snack or chew toy, it will be more comfortable. It doesn’t matter what the snack is, so long as it’s healthy.

With your chinchilla in your hands, see if it begins to squirm, or squeak/squeal. If it does, give it a treat or chew toy. This may quiet it down. This will let you hold your pet for a minute or so without it being scared.

Over time, your pet will feel happier when you handle it without a distraction. That’s because it associates handling with something good, i.e. a treat.

When your chinchilla doesn’t want to be handled before, or you want to put it back, lower it down back into its enclosure (or into its pen, if you have one).

How Long Can You Handle a Chinchilla For?

You can handle a chinchilla for as long as it’s comfortable. This varies from chinchilla to chinchilla. Some are happy only for a minute, while others will sit in your lap for hours.

Don’t impose a time limit on your pet, e.g. handling it for exactly twenty minutes. If your chinchilla wants to leave, let it leave. It will show that it wants to leave by:

Squirming. The chinchilla is trying to make you drop it.

Making loud noises. When frightened, chinchillas make barking noises or squealing noises.

When you notice these signs, let your pet go. You can try handling it again later. Don’t drop your chinchilla from a height. Instead, lower it to the ground and allow it to hop from your hands from a couple inches off the ground.

To be clear, chinchillas are comfortable jumping up and down much further than that. They can jump three feet. But if your pet isn’t expecting to jump/fall from such a distance, it may hurt itself by accident.

Below, you can find our chinchilla quiz, new posts for further reading, and a signup for our Chinchilla Newsletter!

[ays_quiz id='9']

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