Hamsters are incredibly popular pets.
They're famed for being cute little balls of fuzz who just run on their wheels or in
their plastic balls or lap beads of water out of their little water bottles and dig
around in wood chips and what have you.
But underneath that cute exterior lies a miserable pile of dark secrets.
Hamsters, it turns out, are blind, alcoholic, inbred, murderous, cannibalistic cranks.
Hamsters are terrible.
For humans, one of the strongest natural emotional forces is the protective instinct a mother
feels toward her children.
So that's why it's so shocking for many people to find out that it's actually not that uncommon
for a mother hamster to kill and eat her babies.
There are a number of reasons why this might happen: stress caused by the size of the litter,
fear of the environment, especially if some goony human pokes too close or too often around
a hamster cage with a litter of pups in it, a human's scent getting on the babies and
confusing the mom so that she doesn't recognize her own offspring, insufficient food, or just
because the mother feels overwhelmed and worries she won't be able to provide for or protect
her babies.
It's actually an act of mercy, not just some case of sudden cannibalistic munchies.
In that context, it's much clearer that a hamster mother eating her babies is actually
just a different manifestation of that same protective maternal instinct that human mothers
feel, and it's maybe a little easier to understand.
But all that understanding might fall away when you read about how hammy moms sever their
pups' heads.
Respect and understanding, man.
They are hard won, but sadly can be lost by something as small and inconsequential as
eating your own child's head.
Hamsters are rodents, and there's one thing that ties all rodents, as well as related
species like rabbits and hares, together.
It's the fact that their incisors, their front teeth, grow continuously over the span of
their life, like some kind of terrible tooth nightmare.
Normally, the teeth stay a normal length because rodents gnaw at their food, and they're naturally
ground down in that process.
Yes: that is also gross, and not a great alternative to the mental image of infinitely long teeth.
But what happens if their teeth don't get properly ground down in the normal eating
process?
Well, the teeth might become overgrown and curve into their gums, get caught on things,
cause drooling, hyperventilating, and cause problems with swallowing.
Those are all terrible and gross things to imagine, so how do you fix it?
Well, with another terrible and gross thing: trimming your hamster's teeth.
The good news is that this is a simple horrific process with simple tools you already have
in your house whose memory will be forever tainted by this foul dental deed.
No need to use a dremel tool like you might with a larger animal like a rabbit or chinchilla.
Just use suture scissors or a pair of fingernail clippers and try not to think about the amateur
veterinary dental surgery you did next time you clip a hangnail.
The hamster is a burrowi-ng, crepuscular animal, which means it's active during the hours of
dawn and dusk, and lives underground.
As such, a good sense of sight is about as useful to them as a never-ending pasta pass
at Olive Garden.
While hamsters do see okay in dim light, in bright light they're basically blind.
Baby hamsters are blind at birth, and as adults they can only ever see a few inches in front
of their nose.
A hamster's main methods of getting around are using their other senses, such as hearing,
smell, and touch via their whiskers.
The bad news is that this bad vision poses a number of dangers for pet hamsters as well
as their owners.
These Mister Magoos of the animal kingdom are known to walk off high surfaces or jump
out of hands or off shoulders and hurt themselves or worse.
The lesson here is don't perch your hamster on your shoulders or hold them in your hand
while standing up.
Also don't buy them multi-level cages or, you know, put them on high surfaces...even
if you think it would be cute to put them on the ceiling fan blade, even if the fan
is on low.
Hamsters' poor vision is also the main cause for biting, as sudden moves frighten them,
and if they don't catch or recognize their owner's scent, they might bite defensively
at the unknown giant blob trying to shove them into a ball.
Despite the clear classification of hamsters as rodents, the hamster seems to have a little
canine DNA in its genome as well: turns out they're part booze-hound.
That's right: according to the New York Times, hamsters are popular with alcohol researchers
because these little dudes are nuts for hitting the sauce.
Given the choice between drinking from a bottle of water and a bottle of alcohol, they will
choose the alcohol 100 percent of the time.
They love it.
How did hamsters develop their adorable love of liquor?
It's related to their instinct for hoarding.
They bury fruit to store all summer, and when they come back to it in wintertime, the fruit
has fermented and the hamsters get turnt.
As a result, they've come to prefer and even seek out the smell and taste of fermented
fruit because that fruit is easier to find by scent.
It turns out they can handle their liquor better than humans, though.
Their livers are developed enough to metabolize comparatively large servings of alcohol.
In terms of size relation to their other organs, a hamster's liver is five times the size of
a human's.
You know, proportionately.
Not literally.
If you had hopes for a whole hamster village in your home, you should throw your Hamster
House plans in the trash.
Turns out hamsters are super territorial.
While it's not uncommon to see hamsters caged together at pet stores, it's because these
hammies are usually really young.
Once hambos hit about 8 to 10 weeks of age, you have to keep them apart or they will fight
it out until one or both are dead, like those guys with switchblades who strapped their
wrists together in the "Beat It" video.
Even if they don't fight, close proximity between adult hamsters will cause enough stress
to significantly shorten their life spans.
The only time adult hamsters should be together is when they're mating, basically, but even
then it's an uneasy truce that's short-lived at best.
If you have multiple hamsters, you have to keep them in separate cages and they should
have their own toys.
If you have one hamster and you somehow feel like that isn't enough, having two hamsters
is a good way to get a million hamsters, because these cute little fluffs are actually unstoppable
baby-making machines.
A hamster can get preggo at just four weeks old, and then a female hamster will come into
heat, that is, become receptive for mating, every four days.
For comparison's sake, most dogs come in heat two or three times a year.
You can tell your hambo is in heat because she will give off a strong, hormonal odor
that will serve as a musky and unwanted reminder of your tiny month-old friend's budding sexuality.
If a boy hamster and a girl hamster get together long enough to mate without killing each other,
you can expect a litter of hamster pups in about 18 to 22 days depending on the variety
of ham you have.
The litter will likely be between 3 and 12 pups, depending on the hamster type, though
a Syrian hamster uterus can hold up to 24 little miracles.
If this isn't enough babies for you, great news!
Dwarf hamster females come back into heat immediately after giving birth, so just refill
that furry little mama like a PEZ dispenser full of babies and you'll have another dozen
pups in less time than it takes for an issue of Southern Living magazine to come out.
Just kidding.
Absolutely do not breed your hamster two cycles in a row, you monster.
Also adopt, don't breed.
There are enough hamsters.
You monster.
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