We have two hamsters – a female dwarf named Cupil (aka “Little Vicious”) and a male teddy bear named Gatchan. Gatchan is a big sweetheart. He’s really mellow and tame and loves human contact. Cupil is a bit more … challenging. Hence the nickname.
For Christmas this year both hamsters got hamster puzzle boxes. They’re little cardboard boxes with nut treats inside. The hamster can see the treat through holes in the box, but to get it out they need to gnaw their way through the box. It’s great fun if you love to gnaw. Each hamster got one box right after Christmas. Gatchan loved his and went crazy trying to get it open. Cupil was kind of “meh” about hers. Even after she got the box open, she didn’t finish her treat. Oh well, more for Gatchan.
We gave Gatchan another one last night and again, he totally freaked out. After about ten minutes of frantic gnawing he’d shredded the box and freed the treat. Then he went off in a corner of his cage to enjoy his reward.
About an hour later, I noticed him doing something really weird. First he was carrying the half-eaten treat in his mouth. Then he took it into his little hamster hut, and came out without it. Then he ran around to the side of the hut, burrowed down through the fluff, grabbed the treat and dragged it out through the hole. Then he took it back into the hut again! Over and over and over again, literally dozens of times. It’s like he had so much fun finding it the first time that he made up a little game where he could “find” it as many times as he wanted to.
Are most hamsters capable of this level of abstract thought, or do we have a hamster genius?
The thing is, he was very directed about it. It wasn’t like he was exploring before “finding” it again. He’d come out the door of the hut, turn right, go straight to the spot where it was hidden, and immediately dig for it. Over and over again. If he’d forgotten about it I’d expect him to wander around a bit instead of making a beeline for it.
Just so you know my credentials, my understanding of hamsters comes from reading a few slim books, skimming numerous web pages, and keeping two of the little furballs for a number of years.
In the wild, golden, or Syrian, hamsters are desert animals. They live in very arid areas where food is scarce. Their typical lifestyle is pretty solitary because the food supply will not support dense population. They emerge from the hole after the heat of the day to forage for food, which they pick up and stuff into their cheek pouches. They carry it back to their den and store it against famine. The dry desert air keeps the food from molding.
I’d guess that what you’re seeing is the hamster re-creating a natural behavior as best he can. He’s mimicking the night-long search for food morsels, he just has only one prize at the moment…so he keeps bringing it back to his den, over and over, because that “feels right.” Inasmuch as hamsters feel motivation, and I believe they do, he probably feels rewarded by the sense that he’s banking up food for the inevitable days of famine to come.
One of mine used to grab one item from his food dish, hop on the wheel and run for a few spins, then hop off and grab another item, and repeat. It would have been more efficient to just sit by the bowl and vacuum it all up, but tyhat would not have re-created the regular foraging rounds that kept his ancestors alive.
Incidentally, two hamsters will usually fight when introduced, because they can’t abide food competition too close to their own foraging grounds. Be careful.
Oh we know. They have separate cages and their sole interaction is colliding with each other when they’re rolling around the living room in their exercise balls. Even though Cupil is about 1/3 Gatchan’s size I have the feeling she’d massively pwn him if we gave her the opportunity.
I like your theory though. Finding the treat over and over *would * feel like stocking up.
We had a Campbell’s dwarf hamster that didn’t like to eat her vegetable treats unless she could run on the wheel while doing so. She liked individual broccoli florets the best, because she could eat them paws-free, and didn’t have to slow down. I had to be her personal valet and feed them to her one by one.
Part of me wonders if their little brains really comprehend the nature of the wheel, or if they think that their den is magically traveling with them as they run.
We currently have two Roborovski dwarf hamsters, Yao and Shun (named after two of the wise Sage Kings of ancient China, because with their teeny white eyebrows, they look like little old men). They live separately, ever since Shun took a chunk out of Yao in a dominance struggle gone bad. (Whereas Syrian hamsters are indeed solitary, most dwarf species typically live in family groups, and are happier that way. Occasional “bad blood” does pop up, though.)
Yao is currently in a Crittertrail X cage, and really loves it. Over time he moved an astounding amount of fluff into the top wheel, and took to sleeping there. Earlier this week, we came down in the morning to find that overnight, he had moved every single bit of fluff down to the bottom floor of the cage-- the top wheel was absolutely spotless, and indeed looked like it had just been cleaned. We don’t know if he simply got the urge to redecorate (maybe he was paying attention as we were watching HGTV) or whether he was following a natural instinct to “move house”. Regardless, I wish I had seen it in progress as a Robo trying to wrangle that much litter must have been a sight to see!
If you want to see REALLY interesting food behavior, try giving Cupil and Gatchan each a puppy-size Milk Bone. They are good for hammie teeth, and if my past hams were typical, they were always enough to cause about five minutes of frantic searching for the best place to hide the treasure (which often included hoisting the thing as high as possible and running around aimlessly, banging it into the cage bars. When the Milk-Bone is almost as big as the ham, hilarity ensues).
They do. Years ago we had a hamster, the thing learned how to open its cage and took off. Two days later I found it very comfy living in a space between the kitchen oven and the cabinets.
We used to keep all the critter stores in a cabinet in the kitchen, not far from the oven, litter sand, wood shavings, old newspapers and seeds. The hamster moved a pretty impressive amount of all of that to make a hideaway just as his cage, a base of litter sand, shavings on top and some shredded paper for a nest, plus a supply of seeds of course.
It was quite remarkable, almost as much as when it used to climb up my bed and wake me up; not a small feat since I slept on the top bed of a double decker, well over one and half meters above ground level! One day I saw how he did it, he´d put his back against one of the bed`s supports, push against the wall with his legs and walk up, Batman style, to the top. :eek:
Roborovskis are absolutelyadorable. They really are like hyperactive animated peanuts, especially when they are young.
Definitely not for the faint-of-heart or the first-time hamster owner-- their primary defense mechanism is to run flat-out as fast as their legs will take them in the closest available direction, regardless of heights, and since they are Nature’s equivalent of tasty fruit snacks, they do this at EVERYTHING that spooks them. It’s very rare to have a Robo that will sit still in your hand to be petted, although constant forceful snorgling will get them somewhat used to it over time…
We adopted an older hamster from our cousins who barely ever touched the thing. They had named him Smores due to the graham and white colored pattern he had. We ended up naming him Houdini due to his escape tricks.
As the name implies, he was a master at escaping the cage. It was completely plastic with an attatched lid and quite tall. I’m not sure whether or not the lack of attention he got from my cousins played a role (although I believe this) but either way, once he found out a way to climb out the top, there was no stopping him. It was fascinating to watch. He would either stack all of his items to the top where he would force open the top, or he would put an object under the wheel so it would stick and then climb up the wheel. Since my brother’s room was so small, there was really nowhere for him to flee so we usually didn’t mind picking him up in the morning. Although there was a time where he got into a little (closed) miniature door (I don’t even know where it leads, to pipes and stuff) and ended up in between the walls of the basement. The only way my brother could retrieve him was by cutting a hole in the wall. I have no clue how he survived the drop from the first floor to the basement.
As a kid I had one hamster. He would go to the bag of dog food, if he got loose. You went there to get him and he’d have his cheeks stuffed with nuggets. The cheeks made the head 3 times the normal width. On a few occasions he would get taken outside by somebody, and it wasn’t us kids. I would get off the bus and he would be on the steps looking up at the door. He wanted into the house and his nest.
The escaping hamster stories are really amazing. They are resourceful critters.
I don’t have any similarly dramatic stories of escapes, but one of our dwarf hamsters (Seashell, the “Beauty Queen”, normally very laid-back) displayed a surprising talent for sneakiness. She escaped from her cage at least twice, and managed to elude capture for about two days each time…the second time, we discovered her when she sauntered out nonchalantly from behind a bookcase. When we recently reorganized the living room, we found a huge pile of fluff, seeds, papers, etc. back there-- enough of a stash to make me think she might have escaped other times and returned to her cage (with her sisters) without us noticing!
As for “games hamsters play”, I just remembered that Coral (the aforementioned wheel-runner) did play a sort of game with us on occasion. She had a second, external wheel attached to her cage with a series of small holes around the rim. When she would come into the wheel, I would put my finger up to one of the holes, and she would come over and lick my finger. I’d then move to another hold, and so would she…we could go like this for nine or ten reps. What’s interesting is that she (unlike some of our other hamsters) never normally licked my fingers.
Tie a piece of fishing line around the treat. Place the treat back in with the critter. Wait until he carries it back in the hut. When he emerges and goes around the side, YOINK.
