4 Things About Hamsters

4 Things About Hampsters

Cheek Pouches/Displostomes

Hamster cheek pouches are bilateral outgrowths of oral mucosa for temporary item storage. They remain separate compartments to the mouth, containing no salivary glands, where materials like food, bedding or even protected offspring stay dry. The tongue cannot reach, so muscles are constricted to push the contents out.

The pockets aid foraging trip productivity, regarding hoarding ability to reduce bouts needed to collect enough food, predator exposure and subsequently not running out as fast. Excess food found at maximum carrying capacity can get eaten, plus they can still sprint but with additional weight of plausibly over 1.2x.

They possess high elasticity for extension from jaw to shoulder and potentially even further - doubling or tripling in size, where their front is larger than the rump. The top of the head can even sink a little beneath the pouches if they move the head down and out - turning into a flat hovercraft. Actually, they could hypothetically inflate their cheeks with air for swimming buoyancy.

Rough, scaley skin lining helps keep material in the pockets - but please mostly avoid foods that are sticky, have sticky residues, have protrusive edges or are stringy. Aforementioned can possibly induce choking, laceration or impaction (stuck materials that cannot get emptied); where rotting food causes swollen pus abscesses - if one pops, it can cause sepsis (blood poisoning) via absorption.

Alcoholics?

Hamsters maybe have the highest tolerance to alcohol in the animal kingdom. They have super high liver efficiency for catabolism - lots of active alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes result in only traces remaining in the bloodstream after processing. Perhaps they have developed resistance over lineages due to consumption of their fruit and ryegrass seed stores when they ferment and become more alcoholic in the winter.

They can have an instant preference to drink 10-15% ethanol over water - likely due to the calorie content (~7 calories per gram) rather than taste, even though it might be pretty smelly. Their tolerance is approximately 10x more than the average human, with the ability to ingest 18g per kilogram of 90%+ ethanol daily with no problem, equivalent to us drinking a litre and a half of it.

Smell and Odours

Since hamsters have short-sighted, blurry, colourblind vision, they get compensated with their senses of smell, hearing, as well as tactile sensation to learn, forage and navigate their intricate burrow systems. Their sight is poor because they are not diurnal naturally. There is debate on whether they are nocturnal or crepuscular; however it may depend on individual cases, respecting species, wild or domestic environment, light, noise abundance (emphasis on ultrasound) or predator circadian rhythm e.t.c.

Particularly concerning smell, they have scent glands on the dorsal flanks for creating sensory trails along with marking objects, territory, mates - also, offspring - one reason not to touch excessively to avoid erasing their recognisable natural scent to the mother (in case stress influences their... cannibalistic tendencies). Otherwise, they are sensitive to potent foreign or artificial smells - e.g. perfume, air freshener or predator scents like cats causing prolonged distress.

The Jacobson's/vomeronasal organ nerves are crucial, notably for courtship pheromone identification in males. Mounting behaviour should transpire after processing the female's aphrodisin secretion. Without the organ, males are rendered practically dysfunctional in courtship.

Heart Rate and Perception

Hamster heart beats per minute can rise to ~500 (particularly the bigger-bodied ones where the heart must work harder), as warm-blooded small prey animal heart rates are very high for survival purposes. Blood flow to sensory organs elevates perception levels, e.g. hearing becomes exponentially more acute, where they get hyper-alert considering sudden sounds.

Just 10 seconds seem to go so slowly while you are conscious of it and/or during exercise where your bpm rises near its extreme highs (subtract your age from 220bpm to equal what you should not exceed). Imagine how endless time could seem for a tiny prey animal at 500bpm, adrenaline pumping, with adaptations of heightened sensory awareness to detect predators. At least, on average, hamsters spend almost half their life (~40%) unconscious when asleep, meaning a quicker standpoint of time.

-consciousness/perception is one of the most difficult topics due to lacking tangibility, quantitativeness or objective proof-