# Female mounting female



## KiwiHog (Aug 15, 2014)

A couple of weeks ago I brought my Kiwi to visit a friend with another hog (Hikari) just for a little socialization. Both are females. They were in a pen on the grass and the two were highly interested in one another. They were smelling each other and very curious. Soon, Kiwi became more assertive by really using her nose to nudge under Hikari and sticking her head right under her belly. It was cute! Then, Kiwi began trying to crawl over Hikari. Still, so cute! It was then that we realized Kiwi wasn't being playful; she was mounting Hikari! It turned to panic that perhaps I had mis-sexed Kiwi and that maybe she was actually male. After triple checking, we confirmed both are still female. Kiwi continued to pursue Hikari and mounted her a number of times. Hikari did not attempt to run away.

Does anyone have experience with this? Is it perhaps an issue of dominance? Or perhaps Kiwi has some very strong hormones? We supervised carefully to ensure that Kiwi was not hurting Hikari. Neither seemed distressed and so we let them "play" a while longer. I searched online but did not find anything useful (just a lot of Sonic fanfiction). :-/

*Photos show Kiwi (the slightly darker one) and Hikari (the albino girl, party hat picture included). They cuddled a lot and Kiwi was very assertive, nudging with her nose and crawling around.


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## Prickerz (Sep 17, 2014)

You definitely guessed right, it can certaintly be a dominance thing. She wanted the other female to know that if a male happened to come along, that she would get first dibs! 
Male dogs do it, too...


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## Kalandra (Aug 25, 2008)

Both the burrowing under and mounting are dominance behaviors and should not be ignored. Sometimes they establish who is dominate/submissive. However, occasionally they do not. And if left unchecked the situation can escalate and you can end up with a seriously injured (or worse) hedgehog. 

I have seen the damage that 2 females can inflict on each other and have known at least 2 that were disemboweled because their owner failed to realize that the burrowing under wasn't a cute cuddling behavior, but was a hedgehog trying to demonstrate dominance and the situation escalated.


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## Jeans (Oct 10, 2020)

How do one stop this dominant behavior? We also have 1 female who does this and she is the smaller of the 2? It freaks me out. My other one is not enjoying it.


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## alyandgus (Jul 8, 2017)

Jeans said:


> How do one stop this dominant behavior? We also have 1 female who does this and she is the smaller of the 2? It freaks me out. My other one is not enjoying it.


You cannot curb dominance in animals. I would suggest not allowing the two near one another at all, but at the very least only when absolutely supervised. Definitely maintain separate cages.


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