Does playfulness fade?

[goodragons]

Goo-d evening.
I saw an older post saying 3yo goos didn't play-fight, chase, or warble due to their adult age. I was under the impression those were long-term behaviors to some extent. Does goo playfulness wear off over time?
My girls (Gingko & Dot) just turned 1, and while I have noticed they calmed down a lot over that year (thank goodness lol) they still box, chase, warble, and leap most days. I would like to know what is normal to expect in the coming years, out of curiosity if nothing else.

[bouncy]

I've got goos aged between six years and 18 months. They have certainly slowed down since they were pups, but they still do everything mentioned. The oldies don't box much, but they never did. The four year olds and 18 month olds live together and they all box daily, but they always have done.

Other than slowing in one (for health reasons), they're all still just as active and squeaky, just more predictable!

[moletteuk]

I would say social behaviours and activities, vocalisation and interest in life remain but the intensity and energy going into it or times spent per day in high energy activity reduces. I think dominance behaviour is more specific to the degu and to the group and situation, but you might expect some level of mellowing out in most degus with age.

I think generally degus have such strong characters that you are going to find a lot of behaviours specific to the that degu rather than the age group of a degu, it's very dangerous to generalise about degus, without sounding like an idiot, or being immediately proved wrong, probably by your own degu within about 5 mins lol.

In my experience they are young children to about 6 months, full grown at around 12 months but still filled with hormones, theoretically fully mature at 18 months and full of confidence and beans, after this point it depends a lot on the individual when and if they become more sensible and settled in their group, but should be totally in their prime until about 3yrs, from 3 to 5yrs you may or may not notice much difference but they are likely to enjoy being more careful with their energy expenditure and enjoy hanging out and napping a bit more, after 5yrs it depends entirely if any health issues start to arise and have any impact, you might see them move more slowly or the proportion of time spent active just gets shorter, even though they mostly do all the same things.

I suppose there is often an age, maybe around 1yr (?) when they establish their routines they will largely prefer to stick to for the rest of their life. Mine would always get up around when I got up have food and drink and stooge about for a bit, and then spend a good bit of the day alternating between napping, activity, sleeping, eating until late afternoon when they would get up and have a fully active period until bedtime at around my bedtime.

[misscatafer]

I noticed my girls significantly slowed down by 2.5 years, they are now 3.5 years. They still warble and snuggle, but I haven't seen any playfighting or chasing for about a year now. They still both have their individual cute quirks in line with their personalities, and they still enjoy playing with toys, making nests and destroying whatever we give them.

However it is down to personality, we also have a 4.5 year old male who you would think is much younger. He has slowed down slightly now but only about 6 months ago... Before this he would still be flying about the cage singing etc. He still does show his playful side when he is flirting with his other half though!

[klbishop]

evening, my triplets fought tooth and nail (literally) up until they were 5/6 after that they slowed down seemed much more chilled with the occasional reprimand and nip to keep others in line. MY eldest boy passed away last month and was 11.
their characters seemed to mellow out as they got older, in miguels later years we took on 3 younger females as he became lone. he perked up a bit but then seemed like their energy wore him out !