Why you shouldn’t get a Hamster Pet – 13 shocking facts

Why you shouldn’t get a Hamster Pet

Hamsters are definitely one of the most common pets in the world. As a kid, everyone wanted one, and many people still have them now.

Hamsters are easy to take care of, and if you have two of them, they’ll play with each other when you’re not around. But not everything is what it seems to be.

Having hamsters as pets has its pros and cons, just like anything else. And today, we’ll talk about the bad things. There are a lot of things that might make you want to get a hamster.

They are small, cute, and have shiny fur. They look like small toys made of fluff, but they are real. But there are many things you should know about hamsters before you decide to get one.

In today’s article, we’ll look at the other side of these cute animals: why you shouldn’t get a hamster as pet. So, without further ado, let’s begin!

1. Hamsters Biting

In fact, hamsters bite more than most other pets that are rodents. This is mostly because they can’t see very well. They use their senses of smell and taste to figure out what’s in front of them.

If you put your finger or hand in their cage, they’ll probably bite it to see if it’s food. Even though their teeth aren’t that big, they are very sharp and make painful bites.

Hamsters poor eyesight makes them nervous, and when hamsters are scared, they bite.

You should know that they will only bite you out of fear (you would probably bite back if a creature twenty or thirty times your size touched you) or curiosity (if they think your hands are food or something else interesting).

Because of this, you should always wash your hands before handling hamsters. If your hands smell like food, they are more likely to bite you.

Hamsters can also hurt themselves. Since they’re easily scared, they’ll jump out of your hands if you’re holding them. Let’s just say that if you’re a hamster, jumping from that high up isn’t the best idea.

Hamster bites can be very painful

and draw a lot of blood, so don’t take them lightly.

You can probably handle this as an adult, but kids can often be scared off by it and lose interest in the hamster or even start to dislike it.

There have been many times when a child became afraid of their hamster, and who could blame them? Most likely, if your pet kept biting you, you would too.

For example, gerbils are a much better pet for kids. They don’t bite or scratch often, and you can hold and pet them whenever you want.

2. Actions at night and getting up early

Most of the day, these animals spend their time curled up and sleeping. Just like us, they don’t like to be bothered when they’re sleeping, and if you do, they’ll fight back. But hamsters wake up when everything in your house is quiet.

When that happens, hamsters start running around like crazy, which can wake up the whole house, especially if the hamster starts running on the wheel.

They also get up very early, since dusk and dawn are when they are most active.

Hamsters Diseases that run in families

Unfortunately, hamsters often get diseases that run in their families. Because they have been bred too much, they often get congestive heart failure at a young age (as early as 6 months old). This illness has no cure, and treatment can be very expensive.

They can also get a kidney disease called amyloidosis that can’t be cured. Because of this, you’ll have to watch out for their health in more than one way.

They can get sick from many harmful bacteria, which can cause diarrhea and dehydration. Some of these bacteria can also infect people, mostly ringworm.

It’s important to pay attention to two bacteria that can easily spread to kids.

Salmonella bacteria, lymphocytic choriomeningitis, and the hantavirus are the things we’re talking about. Salmonella can cause stomach cramps, diarrhea, and fever. It can be passed from animals to people.

4. Hamsters Training and Taming

Hamsters are much harder to tame than other animals because they are so scared of everything. They don’t trust as much as dogs, or even as much as cats.

Hamsters are less likely to come up to you than cats are. They have evolved to be able to run away and hide from any threat, which is what they will do if they see you coming.

On top of that, hamsters are very active and want to play all the time because they have a lot of energy. It’s hard to train a pet that is active but runs away from anyone who pays it any attention.

5. Hamsters don’t have much love to give.

Hamsters don’t like being picked up, held, cuddled, and kissed like many dogs do. They will put up with it for a while, but eventually they will get sick of it and run away.

Keep this in mind if you’re looking for a pet you can really connect with: they’re not the cuddliest and won’t stay in your hand for long. When they hear their owner’s voice, they will get a little closer to him or her. But that’s about it.

Hamsters don’t love and play as much as dogs do.

6. Hamsters Are Very Sensitive

Hamsters can feel a lot of things. First of all, you shouldn’t take their diet for granted. If you don’t fix it when you need to, it can lead to problems like diarrhea, dehydration, hair loss, etc.

Second, they get scared so easily and are so weak that too much stress can cause them to die. Hamsters have been known to die from being scared by a dog barking at them or by something else.

You can scare your hamster in many ways:

the hamster may not trust you yet, in which case even feeding it will scare it (there’s nothing you can do about this except try to be as gentle as possible);

if you do something very sudden, it will scare it, and that can be hard for you as an owner to get used to; your hamster may be in permanent shock (for example, from moving to a new cage), in which case it will be easily upset; and some

Also, hamsters don’t have very good health. They can easily get any disease, and if you don’t notice it right away and take them to the vet, they almost certainly won’t make it. They are also very sensitive to changes in temperature. They can easily die from too much heat or too little heat.

The size of your hamster’s cage will also have a big effect on it, since hamsters get easily upset in small cages. They will also get stressed out easily if they don’t get enough exercise, so it’s best to let them have a wheel.

Transporting them is also not a good idea because it puts a lot of stress on them.

Now that we can look back on everything, we can see that evolution hasn’t really helped hamsters.

7. Hamsters Breeding

In case you didn’t know, rodents all have very fast birth rates. Three to four weeks after being born, hamsters can start having babies, and when they do, they have babies like crazy. You could make a huge mistake if you bought two hamsters and then got almost twenty more of them.

The workers at pet shops where you buy your hamsters can usually solve this problem by separating the hamsters by gender. But if someone makes a mistake and puts a single male hamster with female hamsters, well, you know what a mess that is.

8. Hamsters Love Escaping

Hamsters are great at getting out of their cages. They can flatten out their bodies and squeeze through very small holes and cracks.

Even worse is the fact that they love doing this and are likely to try to get away every chance they get.

This can make them very vulnerable to getting hurt or killed while they’re on the loose.

9. Hamsters Cages need to be cleaned all the time

Hamsters are like cats in that they are very clean. They clean themselves all the time, which keeps their scent to a minimum. This makes it hard to find them in the wild.

On the other hand, their cages aren’t nearly as clean. In fact, it’s the opposite. Hamsters are known for not being able to keep their cages clean for some reason.

If you put a hamster in a clean cage, it will take less than three days for it to cover the whole thing in poop and urine.

A lot of people can’t stand the smell of their droppings. These dirty cages tend to attract bugs, which are more likely to get sick from infections and make your hamster sick more often.

Now, you might be thinking, “Okay, I’ll just teach it to use a litter box.” – That’s fine, but we’ve already talked about how hard it is to train hamsters and how hard it is to teach them anything.

Some hamsters refuse to use the litter box, and it seems like they have no idea why.

If you want to clean the cage, you always have to take the hamster out of the cage. This means you have to grab it without it biting you. If it bites you, you must clean the wound and cover it with a bandage.

Keep doing this until you can catch the hamster without it biting you. Then, put it somewhere it can’t get away. But your hamster got out of its cage while you were cleaning it, which is easy for them to do. Now you have to find a hamster before you can put it back in its cage.

10. Infectious diseases

Even though it might seem like a good idea to have your child clean the hamster’s cage to teach them responsibility, it’s kind of a bad idea. These cages can be salmonella havens, and kids are especially susceptible to that.

Children don’t always understand how dangerous diseases are, so they might not wash their hands well enough, which could make them sick with salmonella

.

11. Hamsters Lifespan

Hamsters don’t live all that long. Most hamsters live for two to four years. A hamster that is two years old is already old.

If you only want a pet for a few weeks, that’s great. But not many people want that kind of friend.

Instead, most people want a pet that will be with them for years to come (like dogs, who can spend up to a fifth of a lifetime with their human companions). You might not want to change pets every few years.

12. Hamsters need to be watched by an adult.                                                                  

If you buy a hamster for your child, know that they will have to take care of it in a complicated way, even though they only need to be taken care of once in a while.

Even if they don’t have to do it very often, you’ll have to be there when they do.

The same is true for training the hamster. Since hamsters are easily scared and can bite their trainers, you should be there when your child is training the hamster.

Children shouldn’t have hamsters as pets.

Even though most people think the opposite, hamsters are not very good pets for kids. At least not the youngest ones who are under eight or nine years old.

They can be mean, which will scare the kids away, and they can be hard to train, which won’t make your child want to keep trying around them.

Having your child clean their cages and feed the animals may be a good way to teach them responsibility at a young age, but it will soon become a chore for them, and they will try to avoid doing it.

13. Your child can also catch a disease from a hamster.

Even if you are careful and wear gloves, you can easily get ringworm and pass it on to your child or to yourself.

Salmonella, which we’ve already talked about, is another danger for kids that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Your child could hurt the hamster by accident because hamsters are sensitive and children in general are not. And the fact that they keep running away won’t help, just like the hamster’s short life won’t help.

Hamsters are also active at night, which could keep your child from sleeping well.

Overall, if you want to buy a pet for your child, you should think twice before getting a hamster.

People often think that hamsters would make great pets for anyone, but that’s not the case. There are a lot of things to think about when talking about these animals, because they are not as perfect as they seem to be.

You should remember that no animal is bad or mean by nature; they only act that way when they have to.

Hamsters are the same way, and because they’re scared of everything and everyone, it’s hard to get close to them.

It will take weeks to teach your hamster not to bite you, and it will take even longer to teach them to use the bathroom or do tricks.

Even if you don’t mean them any harm, they’ll quickly turn on their owner because they’re scared. It might be best to let this one go and get a different pet.

There are a lot of pets out there that might be better for you. If you ever need advice, you can always talk to your local veterinarian.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed this article… What are your thoughts?