THE GOLDEN RULE FOR HAMSTERS: ONE PER HABITAT

Many times we meet people around us, customers and hamster lovers who are surprised to learn the golden rule of hamsters: there can only be one hamster per habitat.
By "habitat" we mean the place where the animal lives (wrongly called "cage"), and this surprise arises from the fact that all our lives we have seen several hamsters living together in apparent peace in aviaries. Leaving aside that the facilities of these commercial stores are not suitable for their measures and elements that contain (such as substrate), the reason that we can not have more than one hamster per habitat are very simple, and everything lies in the territoriality.

THE HAMSTER, A TERRITORIAL ANIMAL

No matter if we have in our hands a Syrian hamster or one of the different dwarf varieties, the hamster is a solitary and territorial animal that will defend its home tooth and nail from other hamsters.

Unlike rats, mice or guinea pigs, hamsters cannot live in groups or pairs. It doesn't matter if they are parents and children, siblings, of the same or different sex; it doesn't matter if they sleep together and apparently everything "goes well", we should not deceive ourselves and, before having any kind of pet, we should inform ourselves correctly about it.

The great majority of couple or group cohabitations in hamsters end badly: stress and its associated diseases ("wet tail"), fights, mutilations, unwanted litters... And cannibalism. It is very common that in conventional stores (not the modern ones, where only the owner sells what he breeds) we can see offspring of different days, animals with nibbled ears, wounds and, in the worst cases, corpses practically devoured.

LET'S BE RESPONSIBLE OWNERS

The only reason to put two hamsters together is intentional mating, an activity that must be done with knowledge and responsibility, so we only recommend it to ethical breeders.

No. We cannot put our hamsters together to take a picture of them.

No. We cannot allow them to live together out of pity because "they are looking for each other".

If we are interested that our hamster is happy and can have a long and healthy life, we have to accept their nature, and that same nature not only includes the type of food, how their habitat should be (which we can read about in the article "CORRECT HABITAT FOR MY HAMMSTER") or that we must gain their trust little by little, but also accept that they are solitary creatures and the only company they need is ours.