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- May 19, 2004
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2 years is what I've always heard. it's also about how long my old hamster lived.
The longest- lived hamster I have had was my first; he lived to be four and a bit. Maybe it was something in the air in my squalid childhood bedroom/junkyard- I also had a mouse called Beast who lived to be nearly four and they are only supposed to last a year or thereabouts! He ran free on a big shelf in my room and just went on forever; by the end of his life his hair was all patchy and he was all wrinkled like a little Yoda mouse. :_old:OldTimeRadio said:McAvennie_ said:I've had a pet hamster since about 1987, obviously not the same one, been through about 12 of them!
Am I correct that the life expectancy of a hamster is about two years?
Pet hamsters banned in Vietnam
By Andre Vornic
BBC News
Vietnam has banned the sale and possession of hamsters, whose popularity has been soaring.
The Ministry of Agriculture says anyone caught with a hamster will be fined up to 30m dong ($1,900) - almost double the average annual wage in Vietnam.
The authorities say the creatures are a potential source of disease.
Officials have also expressed concern that the animals are imported from China and Thailand without proper licensing or controls.
In a tropical Asian country like Vietnam, hamsters are not a traditional pet of choice.
That role has normally been held by various types of fish.
But a combination of factors including growing incomes and the Chinese Year of the Rat have made the beady-eyed rodents highly desirable.
They have been trading for $10 to $20 each and are reported to be a hit with the young population of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, spawning a whole sub-culture of hamster forums and hamster clubs.
But the authorities are concerned.
Traded illegally over the Chinese or Thai borders, the hamsters are unlicensed and unchecked.
The Ministry of Agriculture has highlighted the risk of disease.
The animals are just one of many imports that escape adequate scrutiny or epidemiological control in Vietnam.
A recent survey alarmingly showed that most anti-malaria drugs - in Vietnam and other countries of the region - were fakes traced back to China.
And reports abound of other counterfeit or dangerous items sold for human consumption - including rather startling internet rumours of a trade in fake chicken's eggs.
They also make excellent willy warmers. When they're dead obviously otherwise that would be weird.There are so few in the wild because the Fortean Golf Society uses them as living tees.
Without reading all the posts here: I thought hamsters are native to the Syrian desert? Not sure where I got that idea from, though.
In other words, the researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 to remove a naturally occurring hormone (vasopressin, and its receptor, Avpr1a) that is typically expected to regulate things like teamwork and bonding. Their hypothesis was that, by removing this hormone, the hamsters would stop regulating their friendliness, and just give in to being cuddly and adorable bosom buddies all the time. But in fact, in had the opposite effect: they were incredibly aggressive, territorial, and violent towards other hamsters of the same sex.We produced Syrian hamsters that completely lack Avpr1as (Avpr1a knockout [KO] hamsters) using the CRISPR-Cas9 system to more fully examine the role of Avpr1a in the expression of social behaviors. We confirmed the absence of Avpr1as in these hamsters by demonstrating 1) a complete lack of Avpr1a-specific receptor binding throughout the brain, 2) a behavioral insensitivity to centrally administered AVP, and 3) an absence of the well-known blood-pressure response produced by activating Avpr1as. Unexpectedly, however, Avpr1a KO hamsters displayed more social communication behavior and aggression toward same-sex conspecifics than did their wild-type (WT) littermates.
…they were incredibly aggressive, territorial, and violent towards other hamsters...
maximus otter
The big cats and escaped snakes are eating them.The usual excuse for seeing big cats in Britain is that they're escaped pets, or from circuses, but if that were true, why don't we have a population of wild hamsters in Britain? Loads of the small furry creatures have escaped from homes over the years, but I've never seen a hamster in the wild. Shouldn't they be more common than panther sightings?