Little Friends Tunnel Tube Rat

A ferret will investigate any hole roughly the width of its own head, and being wrong about that is how ferrets end up behind kitchen units. Giving them a tunnel with a known opening at each end is the cheap way to satisfy that instinct somewhere you can see them.

This is a polyester tube, 36cm long excluding the straps, with an opening of 10cm across at either end. It clips to the cage bars with metal clips rather than sitting loose on the floor, so it hangs where it was put. Little Friends describe the material as eco friendly and say the tube suits ferrets and will hold two or more adult rats at a time. It goes in the machine at low temperatures. Two colourways are covered by this page.

• 36cm long, excluding the straps
• 10cm hole diameter at each end
• Polyester, described by Little Friends as eco friendly
• Clips to the cage with metal clips
• Machine washable at low temperatures
• Little Friends say it fits two or more adult rats at once

On what "eco friendly" means here. Little Friends attach it to the polyester and never say what it refers to - no recycled content, no certification and no fibre breakdown has been supplied to us. There is no weight limit given for the straps or the clips either, and no guidance at all for a determined chewer, which is the gap that matters most: rats gnaw fabric, and a tunnel that comes apart in a cage is a swallowing risk whoever made it. Check the seams every time it comes out of the wash, and take it out if it starts to fray.

Who it's for: ferret and rat keepers with cage bars to clip it to, and anyone whose animals have flattened a cardboard tube in a fortnight and want something that can be washed instead of binned.