hi victoria rachel due to a copyright takedown notice that we received we had
to take down your video from youtube
so yeah my original why syrian hamsters are solitary video
was taken down by force uh because of the use of a very short
clip that i use an example to a channel who believes
syrians are not solitary uh and the clip is their hamsters
physically fighting and technically it could fall it could
fall under the fair use trade but i'm not
going to waste my time fighting with youtube and this channel
and i will just redo my video
so syrian hamsters
are they solitary in a short answer yes
what does the word solitary mean
solitary means to be done or exist alone
syrians by nature
are solitary animals this means they fully live
on their own in the wild by themselves the only time they coexist with each
other is when it comes time to mate and when the
mother is raising the pups so essentially a
male and female will come together they will breed the female
will then chase away the male and tell him to
get the heck out of there and she will then have her pups and then
until eight weeks of age instincts then start to kick into the
pups and they become territorial and then
they move out to go find their own territory
when a syrian hamster becomes territorial they essentially will fight
each other to the death and when they're in the wild this is
less likely to happen because when you have miles and miles and miles
of space if you start fighting each other you have space
to run away and get away from the other hamster
that's trying to fight you over territory
when you have forced two syrian hamsters in captivity
into a cage to live with each other there is no other place to go
so when they do start fighting there is no place for the other hamster
to go and it can lead to death or very serious
injuries syrian hamsters do not get lonely or
depressed from not having a friend this is humanizing them this is giving a
hamster human feelings they don't feel lonely by not having a
companion of the same species like humans do
so many of you may wonder
okay well then why do pet stores house syrian hamsters together this is due to
once again age most pet stores have syrian hamsters that are under eight
weeks of age but of course once they start to get up
to eight weeks of age they generally will start fighting and
most of the time either a pet store won't notice them fighting
and one will end up dead in the enclosure or you will witness a syrian
hamsters fighting in the pet store and you'll have to
alert somebody about it or they will catch it in time and they will separate
the instigator from the rest and put them in a separate cage another thing
is small enclosures syrians are fighting over territory
but if there is no territory to fight over because you have
been trapped in something so small then there's nothing to fight over but this
is no excuse to house more than one syrian together
um because you want to keep them together because it is cruel and selfish
because they do need tons of space this is an animal that
runs miles and miles and miles per night they need large cages
but what about siblings can they live together no
siblings still will fight each other they do not care if they are related or
not that is why in the wild when they grow
up they will start fighting with each other and they will move out
to go find their own territory they do not care if they were
our brothers or if they are sisters they don't love their sibling
they are going to hurt each other no matter what
this is why ethical breeders will separate their syrian pups
at eight weeks of age or sometimes sooner if instincts
start kicking in they will separate them because
they are territorial animals and they are solitary
the amount of people who have told me that they tried to house their syrian
hamsters together or they tried to have them on a play date
and they either killed each other ate each other or
injured each other literally makes me sick
so the fact that anybody would ever promote trying to house
these animals together is just so dangerous
it does more damage than it does good for the hamsters
so i would like you guys to meet ginger ginger
was a hamster that was surrendered to the pipsqueakery rescue
ginger was housed with another syrian hamster which then
she was surrendered because they uh started fighting and
ginger was lucky enough to make it out alive
but she didn't make it out without injuries and
so ginger is paralyzed and she cannot use her back feet
um she as well can't go to the bathroom by herself
so the pipsqueakery has to help her express her bladder so that she can go
to the bathroom if ginger wasn't housed with another syrian hamster
she wouldn't have to go through what she went through
i've also had people who try to tell me that they've had their syrian hamsters
living together for months or years and nothing's
happened and that they just love each other that doesn't make
it okay this also doesn't mean they won't ever
get injured once again by nature syrian hamsters are solitary
so essentially it is a ticking time bomb of when one hamster is
one day going to snap and either kill or injure the other
hamster not to mention syrians will live in stress of being forced to
live with each other and as we all may know
stress causes a lowered immune system which then makes us
susceptible to other illnesses which it's not good stress can also do a lot
of other things and it can make a hamster's coat look very poor you
could have hair loss there's a bunch of different things
stress is not good if you know syrian hamsters are solitary
and you still choose to house them together
that is completely on you if a hamster injures another hamster or another
hamster ends up dead their life is on you because you decided
to put them at risk for i don't know what to see hamsters
being cute together i i understand syrian hamsters are super
duper cute and if i could have more than one in an
enclosure i totally would but it's not worth the risk
for one of my hamsters to end up dying because i thought it was something that
was cute or that they were lonely or that they love each other or anything
like that if you are interested in owning
actual social animals there are so many you can choose from rather than
syrian hamsters there are rabbits, guinea pigs,
chinchillas, rats, female mice, gerbils so many to choose from and all
of these animals are social and they thrive and
get enrichment from the same species unlike syrian hamsters
if syrian hamsters truly were social animals
they would be social in the wild like many other animals are
take the dwarf hamster for example this is a hamster who naturally in the
wild would live in a colony they do this for two reasons
they do this for protection because there is safety in numbers
and for reproduction they don't just become
solitary because there is a limited amount of resources if syrians were
social they would do so in the wild because
logically it just makes more sense to live in a colony because it is safer
and it is way more easier to create more hamsters
but hamsters are domesticated can't they be changed or raised differently
no hamsters are not domesticated the same way dogs are dogs have been
domesticated for 20 to 40 thousands of years whereas the syrian
hamster was brought back in 1930 so that would mean
they've only been domesticated for about 90 years that is
less than a century domesticating an animal also cannot change their
instinctive or natural behavior this is why hamsters
still have the instincts for foraging, burrowing and running and
running and running around in their enclosure and that's why
they need large enclosures this is also why cats still have their
hunting skills as well as their feeding and grooming habits
because they remain very similar to their
wild ancestors in conclusion if you would like to house
multiple syrian hamsters together then i would suggest getting multiple
enclosures where they cannot come in contact with
each other and they'll be a lot happier or
just stick with getting actual social animals
and to the channel who claimed copyright on
my video saying that it was an illegal source
please work on your hamster care standards before you go
around promoting a dangerous theory
thank you
you