Well, not really, but maybe they would make excellent interplanetary travelers…because they don’t need to breathe?
My question is this: does anyone know of some true factoid about hamsters not needing air, or not needing oxygen, or having some other respirational oddity that could explain what my daughter and wife were saying at the dinner table?
OK, so my 7 y.o pipes up at dinner “Do you know what? If all of the air disappeared, and all of the people on earth died, hamsters would still survive.”
“Oh, really? What gives you that idea?”
“Well, when we went to the Discovery Center in Rockford, there was a scientist and that’s what he said.”
“But hamsters need air to breathe, too.”
“No they don’t. That’s what the scientist said.”
Well, as I started to ponder how best to persuade my daughter that hamsters would not survive if all of the air was removed from Earth, my wife chimed in, “Right, that’s what the scientist said.” In all seriousness, not with a wink, and not as a joke.
The problem is, my wife doesn’t understand English 100%, and isn’t particularly precise about terms like atmosphere and oxygen in her native language, so she could easily have misinterpreted what she heard. And while my daughter is pretty keen on science, and generally a reliable reporter of information, she is only seven, so I can’t take what she says about hamsters not needing air without a large grain of salt.
But… they both were convinced that what the scientist had said was that hamsters would survive if all of the air was removed from the Earth.
So does anyone know what they might have actually heard this scientist say? Maybe there is some urban legend about hamsters not needing air? Or maybe some other rodent? Or is it really true hamsters are ambivalent about the whole respiration thing?
