i for one hate it when hamster videos go viral
9 times out of 10 it's either the hamster video has improper care or it's a hamster
showing some sort of behavior that people think is funny or cute when it's the complete opposite
and then you also get these people when there's a viral hamster video they just like crawl out of
their cave and they're like i had a hamster once 10 years ago so i know everything about them and
did you know that if a pregnant hamster is doing a backflip that means they want to scramble
the baby's brains and then everybody else is like wow didn't know that thank you so much for
that information like i learned something new today and then i'm sitting there like
we're not gonna fact check????
so this hamster video went viral on tik tok and then
somebody put it on twitter and then somebody quote tweeted it and then the quote tweet of the video
got on like all platforms and then people were like tagging me and they're like is this true
so here is the video it has 4 million views it's essentially just a hybrid dwarf baby hamster
screaming
and that is the video that is that's it but
somebody quote tweeted it and they went if you're wondering sometimes hamsters just scream once
they find out that they can scream and that got a lot of retweets, quote tweets, likes
and that is why people were tagging me and asking me like oh my gosh is this true?
so yes hamsters can scream it's not a pleasant noise and it's not supposed to be a pleasant noise
the reasons hamsters scream is because they feel threatened
in distressed or scared it's it's a fear-based behavior
they're not doing it because they learn how they're not doing it for fun
keep in mind animals have instincts so they'll naturally know how to do a lot of things
one of them being screaming if they're super duper scared
they don't just like learn it they don't repeat it like a parrot that's not how it works
so after i read this i was like okay where where are you getting this
from like this couldn't have just popped out of nowhere
so i was like i'm gonna get to the bottom of this um and i went ahead and i went on google
and i looked up why do hamsters scream?
so the first result that pops up and google gives you a little blurb of it
it says hamsters vocalized to express a variety of emotions your hamster may squeak while being
fed or playing with his toy he may squeal or scream when he is frightened or angry...
it's not impossible that a hamster might scream intermittently because he has learned he can
so then i look at okay what is this website animals.mom.com
and it's written by somebody named Jen Davis and if you scroll down it says
Jen Davis has been writing since 2004 she has served as a newspaper reporter
and her freelance articles have appeared in magazines such as horses incorporated
it doesn't say anything about if she's actually ever owned more than one hamster
or if she knows like where she's gotten any of these claims there is a reference spot
you can't open it so i can't even see what those 6 references are
i'm sorry but a website that's
written by i guess moms isn't-isn't something that i would consider to be a reliable source
and that's the thing about google
google can be a really good resource but it can give you incorrect
and correct information and it's your job to
determine that just because google put it as its first website doesn't mean it's correct
the way google works is it takes the thing you've searched and it takes all of the related websites
it pulls them all together and it gives you a list of all of them and the first one that usually pops
up is either the most relevant or the most popular website that doesn't necessarily correlate with
like if it's right information it's your job to find reliable sources to learn things from
so a website that i find is a reliable source is a website called diebrain.de
um i think that's in german so i think it means like hamster
i don't know actually what it means i'm not gonna assume what it means
the reason i find this website to be a reliable website is for one it's a german website and
if you didn't know german hamster care standards are probably the highest hamster care standards
in the whole world like i haven't found another country that has better standards than they do
and this isn't just written by like moms
nothing against moms but
this actually has sources they give you reliable sources and references
so when we go to the hamster behavior section and we go down to the
he screeches/squeaks when you approach him it says
screeching is always a sign of fear and uncertainty however some hamsters
really overdo it and start screaming at every little thing while other hamsters never screech
so this is a good thing to note so hamster don't scream for fun
and they don't just scream because they want to spite you
while some hamsters can be scaredy cats and they're going to scream at things more often
than some other hamsters it doesn't mean they're doing it for fun and it doesn't mean they're
doing it just because they learned to do it so then they're going to continue to do it
their feelings are still valid they are still scared the reason they make that
awful noise is to get whatever is scaring them or threatening them to it's to scare it off
in the wild if a predator came up and like tried to like grab it maybe or
something or like spooked it and it like was like ah and made that noise and the
predator may decide like that's scary enough for them and they leave it alone
and keep in mind screaming and squeaking are totally different you can get a really
vocal hamster who squeaks and is fine and is happy and is just vocal
but screaming isn't isn't that screaming is a hamster in distress
i've owned over 20 hamsters um almost all of the species except for a chinese
hamster and i've only had one hamster ever scream and that was after he escaped his enclosure
and then he went into a really tight area and i was trying to get him out and that is when he
screamed that is the only time in my whole lifetime of having a hamster scream
in conclusion what have we learned today
so we learned that no hamsters do not just scream for fun or in spite of you
they're screaming because they are scared
they may not have a reason to be scared in your opinion but you are not the hamster
and we cannot just blindly believe any website that google gives us we need to look at it
and question it and go is this a reliable source so i hope you learned something today
and i'll see you guys in my next video
bye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!