Mary Allen
According to a study, a nice home gives hamsters confidence. The more varied the furnishings in their cage, the more optimistic the little rodents’ attitude to life.
This is reported by Emily Bethell and Nicola Koyama from the John Moores University in Liverpool. The study provides important information on the development of animal welfare for the popular pets and laboratory animals, they write in the journal “Open Science” of the British Royal Society.
The researchers investigated how the interior of the cage affects the mood of golden hamsters. Initially, the animals lived in standard laboratory cages equipped with bedding, a simple running wheel, and cardboard tubes.
Hammock and Luxury Balance Bike
Then the furnishings were changed: Some cages were embellished with more bedding and nesting material, colorful plastic houses and wooden elements, a hammock, nibble sticks, and a luxury whisper wheel. Other hamsters were less fortunate – they even had something taken away from the sparse standard equipment.
Then we went to the drinking trough for a mood test – a cage with several drinking openings in the wall. The hamsters had previously learned that sugar water came out of the drinking holders in certain places and a bitter quinine solution in others. In some places, however, the hamsters did not know the contents, it could either be the delicious sugar water or the bitter quinine drink.
Drank More Optimistically
The researchers report that the hamsters from the well-equipped luxury cages were more optimistic than the others. They often tried to take a sip from the bottles with unclear contents. Hamsters housed in the sparsely furnished cages, on the other hand, preferred to play it safe and often chose not to drink from the questionable bottles.
“We cannot say whether the hamsters felt happy in the upgraded cages,” write Bethell and Koyama. In any case, the animals approached unclear drinking troughs more optimistically and seemed more likely to reckon with the worthwhile sugar solution.
The researchers emphasize that this so-called judgment-bias method opens up new possibilities for measuring certain emotions in test animals and also for developing a species-appropriate attitude for hamsters. Conventional methods, which were also tested in the present study, could not demonstrate such an influence on the home environment.
Golden hamsters have grown in popularity since the 1930s. Initially, they were mainly used as experimental animals, but today they are also among the most popular pets. However, veterinarians keep pointing out that keeping hamsters properly is very complicated.