1. Do not keep them in pairs. Hamsters are loners – keeping them together often results in stress, fighting, injuries and death. They are very happy alone.
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2. Minimum cage size
dwarf hamsters: 30 x 20 x 20 inches (80x50x50cm);
bigger hamsters: 40 x 20 x 20inches (100x50x50cm)!
NOT like this:
Living in cages like this for them is like a human living in an elevator – a lot too small and even dangerous!
For them it feels like this:
Behavior like this is a signal for stress because the cage is too small or that they need more bedding:
Better:
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3. Your hamster (always!) needs a hamster wheel – and it must be a lot bigger than you might think!
Hamster must be able to run with a completely straight back
on a closed surface
with a closed back wall!
NOT like this:
Results of those wheels are: spine problems, backache, stress, injuries!
Minimum wheel size for dwarf hamsters: 9-10 inches.
Minimum wheel size for bigger hamsters: 12 inches!
Better:
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4. Do not buy them plastic tubes (at all):
Those tubes are not suitable at all: Hamsters get stuck or suffocate in them easily.
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5. Your hamster needs enough bedding to dig and build tunnels.
NOT like this:
Better:
Your hamster will be extremely happy and dig around and build tunnels all day (night).
Plastic gets swallowed, splinters, can injure or even kill your hamster.
Better:
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7. Hamsters ALWAYS need a sand bath.
Hamsters love rolling around in the sand, for them it’s like showering. How would you feel without a shower?
You can use those little baths as toilets, but you still need a bigger sand bath!
Better:
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8. Hamsters need a house with at least 2 or more chambers to store food, sleep etc. Also make sure that your hamster does have enough hiding places like coconuts, small houses, toilet rolls!
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9. Do use unperfumed toilet paper for nesting material, don’t use “hamster wool” -> it can tangle around a limb and seriously hurt and even kill your hamster!
NOT like this:
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10. Never ever ever put your hamster or any animal in a hamster ball.
They can’t get out, might suffocate or panic, might run against furniture and seriously injure themselves. The ventilation is terrible, your hamster can’t see/smell/hear enough or use any of their senses properly.
In some countries they even discuss about banning those by law!
Even if you think that “your hamster has fun in it” – please don’t use them!
Pet stores often are very misinformed and sell terrible cages and have little to no idea how to keep a happy hamster – please be careful when trusting them. In the end they often just want to make money – and the hamsters suffer.
Please adopt, not buy hamsters – there are too many hamsters in this world that we need any more breeding.
(Sorry for the spelling errors – I made this post in a rush.)
i literally had no idea, so i feel like this really needs to be stressed
Much like with bettas, there’s a lot of companies out there making a huge profit on habitats that are completely unsuitable for your pets, and counting on consumer ignorance.
;
Yes to that betta thing! A lot of people will try to tell you that bettas barely need any space to move around in (to the point of putting them in planted vases!), and all that does is give them a poor quality of life! I had to put my betta in a 2 gallon tank to transport him from my school back to home, and he was so depressed in there! He just sat there looking all sad until I could put him in something larger.
@sixpenceee So, last week in my dorm, a rat was spotted in one of the toilets (while someone was using it). As you can imagine this got me pretty freaked out and while I was googling to see how likely the chances are of it happening again, I stumbled upon this video by national geographic. It’s pretty fascinating, but unfortunately it didn’t really give me any peace of mind
Oh my
thank you now i can’t sleep or go to the bathroom…
Upworthy carried a story summarizing an experiment demonstrating that rats exhibit empathy. Why do I care about this? Because the graphics showing the experiment on Upworthy made me smile, and smiling is good. Here’s the link in case you want to watch the video embedded in the story.
Some scientists ran an experiment to demonstrate that. Here’s how it worked:
The scientists put a rat in water (which rats hate). Not enough to hurt the rat, but enough to annoy it.
Then they put another rat in a safer, dry area with a door it could open to save the first rat.
When the dry rat heard the damp, miserable rat get upset, she came to the rescue.
Still not satisfied with the result, the scientists ran a more complex test.
What if you bribe the dry rat with food? Will she ignore it to rescue the wet rat in the next chamber?
Scientists presumed it would be easier for the not-in-peril rat to take the obvious selfless route when it was given only one choice. But what if they gave her a delicious bribe (chocolate cereal) and then let her choose between saving her friend and a buffet?
The rats, by a significant margin, still usually saved their friend before getting their delicious bribe. What does that mean?
Rats might care more about each other than things like food, and that prioritization might be encoded in their DNA.
Why should we care about super-thoughtful rats?
It is often argued that humans are inherently selfish — that without guidance, we would all default to killing and stealing and an “every person for themselves” mentality. That we only help others if it helps us. That evolution can’t make us selfless; it’s something we have to force ourselves to do.
But if rats show human-like qualities (they laugh like us, they dream like us, they like to have selfless lovers) like altruism, that means it isn’t a human-learned behavior. It could be encoded in our DNA. It means humans could be empathetic and kind by default.
It also means that rats and humans have more in common than we think.
An adorable rat not spreading the plague and hugging a tiny teddy bear. Much empathy.
PiraticOctopus 