bluey thinks my hand is food - I don't hand feed.

[imnotfood]

Hi guys! I'm a brand new bluey owner of about a month now, and I think I have a bit of a strange one here. I have never hand fed my bluey, yet every time I put my hand in the tank he gets excited and wants to eat it. I would rather him not figure out that i am not edible by biting my bare skin, so I tried putting on a glove to let him figure it out that way, and for a while my glove didn't look like food, until today, and now the gloved hand is food too. I actually let him bite me through the glove to see if he'd figure it out and he didn't really seem to figure it out, he just lost interest after biting all over the glove for a bit.

Does anyone have any ideas for getting him to recognize my hand as something other than food? I don't even know how to start the process of hand taming until he knows that everything that enters his tank isn't food.

[Nae]

If he's new potentially the previous carers (owner, breeder, petstore whoever) hand fed him.

Did he bite your glove hard? I'm a bit of a "just stick my hand in anyway until they get over it" kind of person who would just let myself be bitten until they realised my hands weren't food if i knew there wasn't going to be blood drawn every time The fact that he lost interest after biting the glove gives me the impression this would probably work.

Do your hands/the glove smell like food at all? Or the hand wash you use? Anything like that? Sometimes they ain't too bright and will just try in case your apple scented hand is a weird apple and not just a hand washed with apple scented hand wash.

I would just make sure that food is entirely separate from hands - Like to the point of using tongs to put a feeding dish in or however you feed. And then only use your hands for handling/petting. They can't turn well so as long as you just keep your hands out of snack range assuming he is not moving quickly/aggressively, he'll eventually get the point.