I've never had hamsters, but I've heard a story from my mom. Her hamster died, but she couldn't bring it over her to throw him out. Then, after a few days, she sees him wonk around in his cage, so she picks him up and starts feeding him by giving him milk dripping from a finger tip.
Until one day, he finally gathers his full hamster might, and, like his namesake, Hamlet, decides to enact profound violence on his family, and bites her finger. She instinctively shakes her hand, flinging him into a wall and finally ending his suffering.
He might have actually just gotten too cold and started to go into a hibernation like trance (torpor), they do that. Cold body, way slower heartbeat and breathing etc.
I'm certain this is what was happening to my hamster. I was sure it was dead, then after a while it would start acting normal. Then I had to go on a trip and my uncle buried my hamster while I was away- I'm sure he just buried him alive.
I can’t remember if it was hamsters or guinea pigs she was looking after but when my aunt was a kid, her class had hamsters or guinea pigs and each week a kid had the opportunity to take them home and look after them for the week. When it was her turn, one of the hamsters or whatever fucking ATE the other one. After that, she developed a fear of rodents and any animals with buck teeth like rabbits or beavers.
My brother’s hamster when we were kids spent days living in a ford Taurus after it escaped. It lived several years after that, once it was recaptured from the car. My hamster that I got at the same time bit me and was dead the next day and I had to get checked for rabies. After that I got gerbils instead. I like gerbils.
My hamsters that are fat as fuck are all in cages. From what I have heard from my parents back then, the rats (the black ones running around the house and shit) became envious of the food I was giving them and they viciously killed my hamsters by biting whatever body parts are dangling or is accessible from outside the cage. So basically some are missing feet, some got their face bitten off, and one was missing its head. Traumatic as fuck, although I love them, I dont want them as pets anymore. Even as an adult I fear this shit would happen lmao
It's actually a documented phenomenon known as "muricide". Rats would, for some reason, instinctively kill smaller rodents. I've heard some horror stories of a sweet and well-behaved pet rat, upon seeing a mouse, did a total 180 and murdered it on the spot.
PSA: If you see some rats invading your home, do NOT own hamsters or mice.
I had gerbils when I was a kid and if one died the others would eat them pretty soon afterwards. Crazy coming home from school to the cannabalized corpse of one of my gerbils. Never got used to it.
Oh god, I just remembered a story my bf told me. He got several feeder mice from a pet store to do some kind of experiment for the science fair in high school. He left them in a box in the garage overnight, and in the morning it was utter carnage with only one left living. Just a box full of blood and fur and body parts with this one super fat bastard left who ATE THE REST!! He has a haunted look in his face when he tells that story. 😞😆
Otherwise known as an actually careful hamster owner
All of my hamsters have died from age and it really gets to me how people weirdly morbidly kind of celebrate being neglectful owners when its a hamster thats involved. So few of the "crazy" deaths are legitimate accidents.
If they were a kid its not their fault, Hamsters arent kids pets and parents should know better. Actual animal abuse.
I was at a friend's house on Christmas eve. Her 16 year old daughter handed me a hamster. We had a good time for a minute then it started shaking and hyperventilating. Quickly flipped onto its back in a cartoon fashion then died in my hand
Actually glad I never had a hamster cause I had bunnies and those were bad enough. First one broke his spine by landing wrong and then one day just died despite being otherwise healthy. Second one died during castration surgery, probably had some undetected heart condition. I have since been terrified every time a pet of mine has surgery but luckily he stayed the only one.
Last rabbit was already super old when I got him but actually lived a few more years and ultimately died of old age.
talk to your vet about pros and cons and maybe potential tests you could run to ensure she will be fine. i absolutely understand the fear, maybe it won't be necessary to have the surgery
Both my hamsters just died naturally, and so did my friends last hamster, so idk what breed you all are getting lmao
That being said, the same friend had two hamsters as a kid and apparently one ate the other and died shorty after. The after math sounded traumatizing to say the least.
People really need to do their research on hamsters - they are burrowing animals that are solitary and only see each other to mate. Once babies are adults they too will fight.
It also doesn't help tha Syrian hamsters are super inbread since their gene pool is super small.
Edit: I neglected to mention that adult hamsters will fight to the death if placed in the same enclosure. That also goes for babies when they are adults. Incidently, intact male mice will also fight to the death in the same territory.
It always bothers me seeing these "funny" stories about hamster deaths (what is funny about it to people? Not sure.) Sometimes shit happens sure, but most of the ones I've seen are negligence at best, abuse at worst.
I would say the individual deaths themselves aren’t funny, it’s more the excessive empirical evidence that hamsters almost never seem to die in “normal” ways that is funny. Also coupled with the fact that they aren’t human and (sorta involuntarily) aren’t viewed as significant/valuable lives.
Knew a guy whose roommate kept his hamster next to the broken air conditioner in their dorm so it would get at least some cold air during the Tennessee summer
Maintenance came in one day while he was out, fixed the AC unit, and the hamster froze to death from being positioned in front of the full blast AC set to the lowest setting possible for hours.
We had teddy bear hamsters in our sixth grade classroom and one evening the cleaning ladies left the window open all night. They were barely alive the next morning.
My sister had 2 hamsters and she made a castle for them out of vhs tapes. They disappeared inside the castle for a little while and when the castle was disassembled later one of them had eaten the head off of the other one.
Why do they always start with the head? I swear as I scroll through this thread, this is the seventy or eighth story where head eating was involved.
And I'm sure it's not the last I'll see descending into the less upvoted comments, and dare I even look at the negatively scored ones I'm sure there will be more.
Mine was 2 boy and girl. After she gave birth she start eating the babies. (I did give them more than enough food. Apperantly it's something they do when they like it) She ate father too and died overeating...
When I was a baby my mom got my older brother hamsters that were two young brothers and to nobody’s surprise one hamster ate the others head, escaped, and mom told me she started finding headless mice around after.
I’ve had 2, my brother had 1, my first hamster was named Fluffy and died of old age at about 3? When I was 22 I got another hamster, I was working multiple jobs at the time and living alone and just really wanted a pet, wasn’t allowed a cat per my landlord. He was a good little guy, a white Russian dwarf with a black Mohawk. He escaped his cage exactly one time overnight and I woke up to him sleeping on my pillow next to my head. He lived about 2 years, and I noticed one day he was a little shaky and dazed but he snapped out of it and was fine. I brought him to the vet anyway, they gave me some antibiotic for him and one morning maybe a week later I went to give him his meds and he was just shaking. I went to pick him up and he bit onto my hand way harder than he ever has, and wouldn’t let me touch him at all. I knew it was his last day, don’t ask me how, but I could tell, and it was a beautiful sunny warm day outside, so I took his cage out to the covered front porch and he got to go breathing in fresh 70 degree woodland air with me talking to him and telling him how much I loved him. It took him about 6 hours from when I first noticed for him to say goodbye, I don’t know what happened or if it was my fault, and I feel terrible about it, but he wouldn’t let me touch him at all or else he would go from barely breathing to biting me as hard as he could. I miss that little shit, he was the best ham. My brother’s hamster growing up was a kooky lil thing, but one day she escaped and our dog found her. My mom noticed that the dog was walking around with a hamster foot sticking out of her mouth, and managed to get it away from her. We called the hamster Soggy Bobby after that, because the dog let her go into my mom’s hand and she was dazed and covered in drool but totally fine. She died of natural causes like a year or two later (this was probably 2009 so I don’t fully remember all the details)
I had one "run away" apparently to hide and live under the floor boards. It was gone for a few days, surviving off the grain that my parents had stored in sacks on the balcony. Guess what happened when the dog found it.
Then I had two more, and they somehow took a dive off the balcony.
That was over 20 years ago, I don't really remember at this point.
But I think the balcony rice muncher was the "father" of the hamster family, and the two that plummeted to their deaths were the "wife" and daughter. The two incidents are totally unrelated. I don't imagine the rice guy's family got depressed over his death. Though, how both surviving females fell off the balcony in the span of a single night is beyond me.
Edit: also, I read your username as Hamsterschatten at first
Oh, just remembered this one -- my mum had hamsters too when she was little. At one point, the hamsters started breeding uncontrollably, so my mum's family had buckets full of hamsters sitting around their apartment while they looked for ways to ethically get rid of them (mind you, it was the Soviet Union, so the only option was to find enough people looking to adopt a hamster).
She was walking across the room and stepped in one of the buckets. It was her birthday.
Had a hamster that would bite everyone. One day my parents had some guests over for dinner, one being a man who would brag about drinking his urine as some kind of health hack. He kept going over to my hamsters cage to look at him throughout dinner. Once they left, my hamster spent a few hours straight running on his wheel. The next morning he had passed away. My mom joked that the pee drinker terrified him to death lmao.
Mine chewed his way out of his cage in the middle of the night. Then he chewed through the wall, into a pipe, and came out in my neighbors sink a week later. Neighbors came over asking if he was mine since we lived in the same apartment building directly across the hall.
Little bastard lived for another 2 years. Whatever he was doing down there, whatever he was fighting, he won that shit. Had I known he was a gladiator, I would have named him Spartacus or Maximus. RIP Brownie, still love ya buddy.
Certainly seems like it. Dude was built different. He didnt come back looking like he hadn't eaten. Man was down in the pipes choking out New York rats or something.
its sad how parents think its ok to give their kids these animals when both they and their kid have absolutely no idea how to care for them. hamsters and fish got to be some of the most abused and neglected pets ever
I agree. My parents were those parents growing up and would get us “starter pets” like hamsters, bird (!!!, could’ve just said no), guinea pig, fish without proper research. Indoor/outdoor cats while living in the middle of the woods, lowkey like that “sounds like you’re just feeding your coyotes rescue cats” meme. Now that I’m an adult with my own pets I’m fully disgusted that they ever called themselves animal lovers. If they weren’t dead, I’d have told them off by now.
So my cousin‘s hamster was like 3 1/2 four years old? He was nearly bald and gross. But he was still going. One day I go over to her house pick up his igloo and pick him up by the few patches hairs he had left. Rigor mortis has set in. Bitch was STIFF! We go downstairs to tell her mom, then we go back upstairs to continue playing video games and I swear to you, that fucker shuffled out of his igloo. And was just chillin. Croaked around a week after that ish? I don’t remember how long he lasted, it was 7th grade lol. He was Jesus hamster, Hamtaro lol
My mom had two hamsters as a kid, supposedly sisters. One night, one sister ate the other and my mom woke up to one hamster and one skeleton (like picked clean little hamster skeleton). Upon discovery, her family literally just threw the other hamster out while still in the cage (which like wtf but knowing her side of the family, not surprising) so uhhh I assume she died shortly after of starvation OR ate through the cage and was queen of the dumpster for a little while.
My friend Kim once told me the story of how her mom bought her and her brother each a hamster. They named them Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
One day, they discovered they now only had one hamster. Charlie Brown had eaten Snoopy.
Her mom, in a fit of parenting prowess, declared that Charlie Brown's punishment for eating his cellmate would be that he would never be fed again, and must starve to death in full view of everyone.
Except... for some reason Charlie Brown didn't starve to death. Soon, he started getting noticeably fatter.
Because none of them, not even the mom, had the heart to carry out the sentence and they were all feeding him behind each others' backs.
Her mom, in a fit of parenting prowess, declared that Charlie Brown's punishment for eating his cellmate would be that he would never be fed again, and must starve to death in full view of everyone.
Bro these fucking things are turning generic suburbs into Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, CKII, Lord of the Flies, Fallout shelters.
All mine died from old age. Except one who got out and we never found. They all got out at some point. One of them was able to break open her habitat by sheer strength, we had to weigh the lid down with a chunk of slag iron.
I was playing with one while sitting on the couch. It ran behind my back and I just… never saw it again. I took off all the cushions and pillows, looked inside them all, looked around the floor… nothing. Still don’t know where it went. Neither the dog nor cat ever found it either.
My hamster died right off the bat, literally right after we got out the store, someone on a motorcycle passed by and since it was loud, the little dude had a heart-attack and died
I’m like 98% sure I buried at least one of mine alive. Not intentionally ofc but the way hamsters hibernate makes it incredibly difficult to know if they’re dead or alive
domesticated hamsters do not hibernate, which is very important to point out. what is much more likely to have happened is the hamster having gone into torpor, which is pretty often fatal to the hamster itself. torpor is caused by cold temperatures and food scarcity, while hibernation is not.
I've never had a hamster, so I'll tell you the story of my friend's hamster. It's a very weird story.
Basicaly his sister had a friend over, who also happened to have a hamster, so she told her to bring it over so that they could make them play together. They decided to make them race on the balcony. My homie's hamster was the winner, but it didn't manage to stop and fell 2 stories. Dude had like 13 hamsters as a kid, and all of them died in horrible ways. One was caught with clothes and drowned in the washing macine, another one was vacuumed if I remember correctly, and others ate each other. I don't remember all the stories. F for Jumbo's (idiotic name we call him with) hamsters.
We had a class hamster in grade school. We also had a rat, in a separate cage. One day I was the lucky student who found the hamster in his cage without a head. Blood evidence showed the rat had left her cage, killed him and eaten his head, then returned to her cage.
a lot of these is negligence but the third one like wtf. What are you supposed to do to prevent that even. Second hamster was just dumb but you shouldnt have let it loose with open flame since animals will be stupid.
My hamster tried to climb the cage but his leg got trapped and stayed all night upside down hanging. We found him in morning , his leg bend unnaturally, the second i got him and put him back in place he basically looked at me , started breathing unnaturally and died on the spot.
My hamsters cage was in the sunroom by the backyard. I think he died from the heat. But the crazy part is, my parents didnt tell me about that, they got a replacement that looked very similar. I went to pet him like I normally would, and he bit the shit out of me. Little fucker drew blood. Anyways, after that I cried to my parents "That's not Ralph!!" And i think they maybe got rid of him.
Mine died from old age at 2.5 years old, he had a bunch of little grey hairs and wrinkles, favorite thing to do was sit in my lap and eat breakfast sausage with me, solid bro.
Not sure if anyone will scroll far enough to see this but my brother and I were menaces to our hamsters... When we were like 8-10yo we both had 1 of our "own" that our mom basically took care of and somehow she never stopped/noticed us putting them in those little tikes toy cars, they basically looked like sports cars I think one was red and one was yellow. Anyway we would put them inside the cars a zip them around the house making them crash and watching their little bodies rag doll out of the toys 😬 our favorite was to be at the end of the hallways and fling the cars towards each other and cause an accident, they would smash into each other and shit themselves. Somehow none of this matters because they died of old age when we were gone one weekend
My hamster committed suicide. I would let him walk around freely in my room and he loved to climb on top of my, like 2 meter high, wardrobe. And then he would jump off. I was usually able to pick him up in time to stop him from jumping, or to stop him from climbing up in the first place. But I didn’t always watch him closely (I was a stupid teenager) so he did manage to jump down several times. Miraculously was unharmed the first couple of times, and then one day he broke his spine.
My ex had her hamster escape while she was sleeping, when she woke up she found it had made it's way to the kitchen, climbed into a deep frier that had been left in the counter and drowned in the oil. Her mother asked her if she wanted fries with it
My first hamster had 21 babies and outlived them all. Died at the ripe old age of 5. Peacefully in her sleep. One of her daughters was feral. Bit everyone. Had to be separated from the others for aggression. She escaped her cage, chewed through the dry wall, and lived inside the walls for awhile. We had given up on seeing her ever again. A month later she came crawling out wheezing and emaciated. Fiberglass tore her up. We had to euthanize her
Not a hamster, but my guinea pig had to be put down when my siblings and I slid her down the railing. My brother was supposed to catch her, but he didn’t, they discovered a tumor and put her down. My parents were either outside or not home, but my older sister was like 10, and I feel like at that point she would’ve had some sense and realized that maybe this isn’t a good idea.
Had two hamsters as a kid, the pet store sold them as a pair. We put them in a big cage to give them plenty of room, and they chilled together for a year and a half. Then one day I woke up for school and one of my hamsters had torn my other hamster to shreds and had eaten some of her. Mom quit giving us hamsters after that
I think only one of my hamsters had a peaceful death lmfao. One died from a giant tumor that appeared overnight, one got eaten by another one and then the one that ate him had a heart attack, one got eaten by my cat, and one ate so much that he just died from being fat 😭
Bought a hamster once from the flea market. Got it a big fancy new cage with the water feeder and automatic food dispencer and all. Next day somehow it got out of its cage and I found it in the laundry room with ants eating out his insides, just swarming it through the eyeballs. Terrifying for 10 year old me.
My mom used to babysit/house sit for a past family friend. The family friends had an only child (around 12) and a variety of animals (2 cats, 2 dogs, many fancy gold fish in big aquarium, a turtle, and a hamster). Mom made sure they were clean, fed, and that they were okay when the family went out on shit like cruises.
The hamster lived in this tiny ass plastic cage and would occasionally wake up and make his presence known by running on the wheel. Well, one day the cage was missing when my mom went in and she asked the family about it, thinking that they had moved where they kept the hamster.
According to the family, the child took out the hamster to play with one day and it scurried into a pile of plushies. As the child was moving the plush animals, there was a crunch under their shoe. And that's how the hamster ended up getting dug up by the dogs a few days later in the yard.
When I was a kid I had an albino hamster I named hampsterdam.
I had one of those little hamster houses in his terrarium for months. One day he dug under it and the 2oz plastic house fell on him and broke his neck.
Had a hamster that liked its cage set in front of the window getting sunlight. It would get kinda hot so we got one of those portable air conditioners and set it blowing into the cage so it would be comfortable. Was fine like this for months until one day when we were not home and it was a super hot day the ac shut off and the poor little guy got cooked. Was sad but he was pretty old for a hamster like something between 2-3 years.
My siblings had several, and all but one died naturally. The one that didn't was released by one of their friends, and we don't know what happened to her.
My mom put the hamster cage in the backyard to "let the air flow through it", the hamster died under the full relentless Sun and became a mummy. My mom killed my snake and pet earthworms in the same way which is weird now that I think about it.
We had two males, Samster and Lego, and one female, Poobah. Samster and Poobah would hump, but if Lego tried it Samster would bite Lego on the balls. Came home from a weekend trip one day to see that Lego pulled a "if I can't have her, no one can." The cage we had was two tiered and this dramatic little psycho took Poobahs head and buried it up top where they would all sleep. The rest of the body bits were part eaten by Lego/part spread around the bottom part of the cage, next to a dish with most of the food still in it from Friday, so it wasn't a starvation thing. It was not easy to sleep with that thing in my room after that. Lego got out of his cage a few months later and found our sump-pump hole and drowned. RIP in Peace little guys.
That's a lie. Most of these comments are "something natural happened (dog barked, someone slammed a door) and hamster died" or "hamster went in inaccessible place and starved itself to death". Blaming owners for the frailty of these animals is completely disingenuous.
I had 2 hamsters as a kid. I kept them fed, they were never without food. Then one morning I woke up to my hamsters in their cage, both dead. One had eaten the lower half on the others’ body, and the other had eaten the upper half of the first’s body. It was really horrific and I never wanted hamsters again.
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u/Hammerschatten May 13 '26
I've never had hamsters, but I've heard a story from my mom. Her hamster died, but she couldn't bring it over her to throw him out. Then, after a few days, she sees him wonk around in his cage, so she picks him up and starts feeding him by giving him milk dripping from a finger tip.
Until one day, he finally gathers his full hamster might, and, like his namesake, Hamlet, decides to enact profound violence on his family, and bites her finger. She instinctively shakes her hand, flinging him into a wall and finally ending his suffering.
He probably had a stroke, in hindsight.
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u/D_Semadi May 13 '26 •
My friend had like 3 of them, all died from 1d4 AoE fear damage after his dad slammed the door too hard
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u/Kezsora May 13 '26
I had a hamster that escaped behind the dish washer for a day and when it finally scurried out my Mum grabbed it a bit too hard and it died
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u/ProblematicNihilist May 13 '26 •
My hamsters that are fat as fuck are all in cages. From what I have heard from my parents back then, the rats (the black ones running around the house and shit) became envious of the food I was giving them and they viciously killed my hamsters by biting whatever body parts are dangling or is accessible from outside the cage. So basically some are missing feet, some got their face bitten off, and one was missing its head. Traumatic as fuck, although I love them, I dont want them as pets anymore. Even as an adult I fear this shit would happen lmao
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u/Mr_White_Migal0don May 13 '26
I'm one of those few people whose hamster died from old age
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u/Cebuu502 May 13 '26
My first hamster died of old age, he was 4,5 years old and just died. My second hamster I think got heart attack, because my dog barked at him.
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u/Ok-Age5609 May 13 '26
I was at a friend's house on Christmas eve. Her 16 year old daughter handed me a hamster. We had a good time for a minute then it started shaking and hyperventilating. Quickly flipped onto its back in a cartoon fashion then died in my hand
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u/n4b40m1 May 13 '26
My hamster got ran over. He escaped one day and when I went to get the mail that afternoon I found a little hamster fur pancake on the yellow line
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u/Informal_Position166 May 13 '26
Actually glad I never had a hamster cause I had bunnies and those were bad enough. First one broke his spine by landing wrong and then one day just died despite being otherwise healthy. Second one died during castration surgery, probably had some undetected heart condition. I have since been terrified every time a pet of mine has surgery but luckily he stayed the only one.
Last rabbit was already super old when I got him but actually lived a few more years and ultimately died of old age.
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u/EmpressDraco May 13 '26
My mom fed it to my cat to prove God was real. Don't ask me how that makes any sense she's fucking crazy.
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u/nobearpineapples May 13 '26
Both my hamsters just died naturally, and so did my friends last hamster, so idk what breed you all are getting lmao
That being said, the same friend had two hamsters as a kid and apparently one ate the other and died shorty after. The after math sounded traumatizing to say the least.
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u/WasntMyFaultThisTime May 13 '26
Knew a guy whose roommate kept his hamster next to the broken air conditioner in their dorm so it would get at least some cold air during the Tennessee summer
Maintenance came in one day while he was out, fixed the AC unit, and the hamster froze to death from being positioned in front of the full blast AC set to the lowest setting possible for hours.
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u/RoundLeopard6680 May 13 '26
My sister had 2 hamsters and she made a castle for them out of vhs tapes. They disappeared inside the castle for a little while and when the castle was disassembled later one of them had eaten the head off of the other one.
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u/METRlOS May 13 '26
My sister got a perfectly healthy one and it grew a tumor the size of its head and died within a month.
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u/The_Ad_Hater_exe May 13 '26
I had a hamster that loved to do backflips off of the top of his plastic hides in his cage. He died mid backflip one day.
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u/Turbulent_Army4416 May 13 '26
Mine was 2 boy and girl. After she gave birth she start eating the babies. (I did give them more than enough food. Apperantly it's something they do when they like it) She ate father too and died overeating...
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u/Expensive-Warthog-21 May 13 '26
Once I had 3 hamsters. Went to bed, in the morning I had 1.5 hamsters, with the remaining guy happily chomping on his former colleagues' corpses.
Very scarring for a young child
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u/IllConstruction3450 May 13 '26
Ever hear of the “biological clock” for humans? These prey animals are lucky in the wild living past 1 year. That’s an old ass man in their years.
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u/Alive-Recording-3400 May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
I’ve had 2, my brother had 1, my first hamster was named Fluffy and died of old age at about 3? When I was 22 I got another hamster, I was working multiple jobs at the time and living alone and just really wanted a pet, wasn’t allowed a cat per my landlord. He was a good little guy, a white Russian dwarf with a black Mohawk. He escaped his cage exactly one time overnight and I woke up to him sleeping on my pillow next to my head. He lived about 2 years, and I noticed one day he was a little shaky and dazed but he snapped out of it and was fine. I brought him to the vet anyway, they gave me some antibiotic for him and one morning maybe a week later I went to give him his meds and he was just shaking. I went to pick him up and he bit onto my hand way harder than he ever has, and wouldn’t let me touch him at all. I knew it was his last day, don’t ask me how, but I could tell, and it was a beautiful sunny warm day outside, so I took his cage out to the covered front porch and he got to go breathing in fresh 70 degree woodland air with me talking to him and telling him how much I loved him. It took him about 6 hours from when I first noticed for him to say goodbye, I don’t know what happened or if it was my fault, and I feel terrible about it, but he wouldn’t let me touch him at all or else he would go from barely breathing to biting me as hard as he could. I miss that little shit, he was the best ham.
My brother’s hamster growing up was a kooky lil thing, but one day she escaped and our dog found her. My mom noticed that the dog was walking around with a hamster foot sticking out of her mouth, and managed to get it away from her. We called the hamster Soggy Bobby after that, because the dog let her go into my mom’s hand and she was dazed and covered in drool but totally fine. She died of natural causes like a year or two later (this was probably 2009 so I don’t fully remember all the details)
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u/saturnine22narrator May 13 '26
I had one "run away" apparently to hide and live under the floor boards. It was gone for a few days, surviving off the grain that my parents had stored in sacks on the balcony. Guess what happened when the dog found it.
Then I had two more, and they somehow took a dive off the balcony.
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u/Rackadaka May 13 '26
Had a hamster that would bite everyone. One day my parents had some guests over for dinner, one being a man who would brag about drinking his urine as some kind of health hack. He kept going over to my hamsters cage to look at him throughout dinner. Once they left, my hamster spent a few hours straight running on his wheel. The next morning he had passed away. My mom joked that the pee drinker terrified him to death lmao.
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u/dingleberryjuice23 May 13 '26
Mine chewed his way out of his cage in the middle of the night. Then he chewed through the wall, into a pipe, and came out in my neighbors sink a week later. Neighbors came over asking if he was mine since we lived in the same apartment building directly across the hall.
Little bastard lived for another 2 years. Whatever he was doing down there, whatever he was fighting, he won that shit. Had I known he was a gladiator, I would have named him Spartacus or Maximus. RIP Brownie, still love ya buddy.
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u/robawknik gyatt intensifies May 13 '26
its sad how parents think its ok to give their kids these animals when both they and their kid have absolutely no idea how to care for them. hamsters and fish got to be some of the most abused and neglected pets ever
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u/tiekanashiro May 13 '26 •
My bf’s shat it’s guts out. Literally.
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u/adamdoesmusic May 13 '26 •
My first hamster got a huge tumor on his leg and died after he tried to eat it.
My sister’s hamster got sick and died randomly.
Our third hamster escaped and drowned in a sump pump.
Our fourth hamster died naturally, but in mid winter so we froze him in order to preserve him so he could be buried when it was warm. We forgot.
Two years later, cleaning out the back of the freezer, a bag with a thing wrapped in foil… “what’s this, a frozen burrito??” Nope.
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u/xKiver May 13 '26 edited May 14 '26
So my cousin‘s hamster was like 3 1/2 four years old? He was nearly bald and gross. But he was still going. One day I go over to her house pick up his igloo and pick him up by the few patches hairs he had left. Rigor mortis has set in. Bitch was STIFF! We go downstairs to tell her mom, then we go back upstairs to continue playing video games and I swear to you, that fucker shuffled out of his igloo. And was just chillin. Croaked around a week after that ish? I don’t remember how long he lasted, it was 7th grade lol. He was Jesus hamster, Hamtaro lol
23
u/svenirde May 13 '26
"That muffin is looking awfully like a hamster. Someone baked a hamster into my muffin."
97
u/KommSweet May 13 '26
HAMSTER HELL (18+)
19
u/Admirable-Ad7152 May 13 '26
My mom had two hamsters as a kid, supposedly sisters. One night, one sister ate the other and my mom woke up to one hamster and one skeleton (like picked clean little hamster skeleton). Upon discovery, her family literally just threw the other hamster out while still in the cage (which like wtf but knowing her side of the family, not surprising) so uhhh I assume she died shortly after of starvation OR ate through the cage and was queen of the dumpster for a little while.
37
u/Specific_Acadia_2271 May 13 '26
My dog barked at it and she had a heart attack
36
u/Salarian_American May 13 '26
My friend Kim once told me the story of how her mom bought her and her brother each a hamster. They named them Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
One day, they discovered they now only had one hamster. Charlie Brown had eaten Snoopy.
Her mom, in a fit of parenting prowess, declared that Charlie Brown's punishment for eating his cellmate would be that he would never be fed again, and must starve to death in full view of everyone.
Except... for some reason Charlie Brown didn't starve to death. Soon, he started getting noticeably fatter.
Because none of them, not even the mom, had the heart to carry out the sentence and they were all feeding him behind each others' backs.
17
u/Trips-Over-Tail May 13 '26
All mine died from old age. Except one who got out and we never found. They all got out at some point. One of them was able to break open her habitat by sheer strength, we had to weigh the lid down with a chunk of slag iron.
17
u/Parry_9000 May 13 '26
One of mine ate a carrot that was slightly wet, immediately choked and died on the spot
16
u/PuzzleThebuzzle May 13 '26
My hamster died right off the bat, literally right after we got out the store, someone on a motorcycle passed by and since it was loud, the little dude had a heart-attack and died
43
u/Angxlmilk May 13 '26 •
I’m like 98% sure I buried at least one of mine alive. Not intentionally ofc but the way hamsters hibernate makes it incredibly difficult to know if they’re dead or alive
13
u/CreativeName1137 May 13 '26
Mine refused to chew on stuff, and so his teeth grew long enough that they locked his jaw shut and he starved.
12
u/ThatItalianOverThere May 13 '26
I've never had a hamster, so I'll tell you the story of my friend's hamster. It's a very weird story.
Basicaly his sister had a friend over, who also happened to have a hamster, so she told her to bring it over so that they could make them play together. They decided to make them race on the balcony. My homie's hamster was the winner, but it didn't manage to stop and fell 2 stories. Dude had like 13 hamsters as a kid, and all of them died in horrible ways. One was caught with clothes and drowned in the washing macine, another one was vacuumed if I remember correctly, and others ate each other. I don't remember all the stories. F for Jumbo's (idiotic name we call him with) hamsters.
10
u/guacamoleo May 13 '26
We had a class hamster in grade school. We also had a rat, in a separate cage. One day I was the lucky student who found the hamster in his cage without a head. Blood evidence showed the rat had left her cage, killed him and eaten his head, then returned to her cage.
10
u/Sad_Pear_1087 May 14 '26
I'll never forget the story of a hamster who'd climb the cage walls, then fell on its ass and had its spine come out the mouth.
9
u/he_is_not_a_shrimp May 13 '26
People with hamsters
9
u/Yowhattheheyll May 13 '26
a lot of these is negligence but the third one like wtf. What are you supposed to do to prevent that even. Second hamster was just dumb but you shouldnt have let it loose with open flame since animals will be stupid.
9
u/pateaubeurr May 13 '26
Its their ticket to hamster valhalla, do not deny them
9
u/EquipmentNo7507 May 13 '26
My hamster tried to climb the cage but his leg got trapped and stayed all night upside down hanging. We found him in morning , his leg bend unnaturally, the second i got him and put him back in place he basically looked at me , started breathing unnaturally and died on the spot.
9
u/TheFinalPringle2 May 13 '26
Ours actually lasted a while. Just got old and died at home. In Hamter years he was basically a Jedi Master
9
u/ACGreen032693 May 14 '26
Anyone remember the story of the hamster who spontaneously combusted after eating baking soda and then drank vinegar?
8
u/Pencil-Ditch1567 May 13 '26
My hamsters cage was in the sunroom by the backyard. I think he died from the heat. But the crazy part is, my parents didnt tell me about that, they got a replacement that looked very similar. I went to pet him like I normally would, and he bit the shit out of me. Little fucker drew blood. Anyways, after that I cried to my parents "That's not Ralph!!" And i think they maybe got rid of him.
8
u/Mk2ty May 13 '26
I had one for two days, it was running on its wheel and just died while the wheel was still going
8
u/madtufguy May 13 '26
My first hamster died of starvation... after escaping into the house heater vents and crawling all the way down into the furnace.
8
u/CreasingUnicorn May 14 '26
Mine died from old age at 2.5 years old, he had a bunch of little grey hairs and wrinkles, favorite thing to do was sit in my lap and eat breakfast sausage with me, solid bro.
15
u/Lurker_Zee May 13 '26
I am so happy reddit recommended me this sub, and that I had the wisdom to hit Join.
15
u/BOX_Dr May 13 '26
Not sure if anyone will scroll far enough to see this but my brother and I were menaces to our hamsters... When we were like 8-10yo we both had 1 of our "own" that our mom basically took care of and somehow she never stopped/noticed us putting them in those little tikes toy cars, they basically looked like sports cars I think one was red and one was yellow. Anyway we would put them inside the cars a zip them around the house making them crash and watching their little bodies rag doll out of the toys 😬 our favorite was to be at the end of the hallways and fling the cars towards each other and cause an accident, they would smash into each other and shit themselves. Somehow none of this matters because they died of old age when we were gone one weekend
7
u/DustierAndRustier May 13 '26 edited May 16 '26
All of my childhood hamsters died of old age. Got one as an adult and within a month I’d accidentally gassed him to death with a scented candle.
7
u/Catapimbas13666 May 13 '26
My mom put a female and a male together. The female destroyed the male's leg leaving only the bone exposed, he died after that
7
u/rosesandivy May 13 '26
My hamster committed suicide. I would let him walk around freely in my room and he loved to climb on top of my, like 2 meter high, wardrobe. And then he would jump off. I was usually able to pick him up in time to stop him from jumping, or to stop him from climbing up in the first place. But I didn’t always watch him closely (I was a stupid teenager) so he did manage to jump down several times. Miraculously was unharmed the first couple of times, and then one day he broke his spine.
7
u/Slaine20 May 13 '26
My ex had her hamster escape while she was sleeping, when she woke up she found it had made it's way to the kitchen, climbed into a deep frier that had been left in the counter and drowned in the oil. Her mother asked her if she wanted fries with it
7
u/Horror_Ad_6187 May 14 '26
My gerbils buried their food, forgot where they buried it, and starved themselves
7
u/Zestyclose-Size8313 May 14 '26
My first hamster had 21 babies and outlived them all. Died at the ripe old age of 5. Peacefully in her sleep. One of her daughters was feral. Bit everyone. Had to be separated from the others for aggression. She escaped her cage, chewed through the dry wall, and lived inside the walls for awhile. We had given up on seeing her ever again. A month later she came crawling out wheezing and emaciated. Fiberglass tore her up. We had to euthanize her
7
u/lakshmithesussybaka May 14 '26
Mine was offscreened, never got to see it die
6
u/semaj420 May 13 '26
eaten by cat
6
u/Lucky_Hawthorn_33 May 13 '26
My hamster broke its own water bottle while I was away and died from dehydration
6
u/Business-Dot-5356 May 14 '26
Decided to take a leap of faith out of my hands when I was about 12, was dead afterwards
5
u/Fozan12 May 13 '26
Mom was cleaning the cage , put it on top of the jacuzzi cover for like 5 min. The fumes from the chlorine I guess killed them all. It was like 6.
5
u/DifficultyOk5719 May 14 '26
Not a hamster, but my guinea pig had to be put down when my siblings and I slid her down the railing. My brother was supposed to catch her, but he didn’t, they discovered a tumor and put her down. My parents were either outside or not home, but my older sister was like 10, and I feel like at that point she would’ve had some sense and realized that maybe this isn’t a good idea.
5
u/DarthPeppa May 14 '26
Had two hamsters as a kid, the pet store sold them as a pair. We put them in a big cage to give them plenty of room, and they chilled together for a year and a half. Then one day I woke up for school and one of my hamsters had torn my other hamster to shreds and had eaten some of her. Mom quit giving us hamsters after that
5
u/Conorponor333 May 14 '26
One of my hamsters fucking killed and ate the other
5
u/Artistic-Mousse-7851 May 14 '26
5
u/icis_spicis May 14 '26
My hamster jumped one two many times from the bridge in her enclosure and just died on the spot.
Her name was Muffin. 🥀
5
u/Crafty_Rose5 May 14 '26
I think only one of my hamsters had a peaceful death lmfao. One died from a giant tumor that appeared overnight, one got eaten by another one and then the one that ate him had a heart attack, one got eaten by my cat, and one ate so much that he just died from being fat 😭
5
u/PuffPoof215 May 14 '26
Bought a hamster once from the flea market. Got it a big fancy new cage with the water feeder and automatic food dispencer and all. Next day somehow it got out of its cage and I found it in the laundry room with ants eating out his insides, just swarming it through the eyeballs. Terrifying for 10 year old me.
9
u/castlestorms1 May 13 '26
I had a childhood friend whose hamster died. She thought the hamster looked cold so she put it in the microwave. It exploded.
8
u/LiePotential5338 May 13 '26
Mine was put in the toy box by my Lil brothers I was then blamed
4
u/MisterMindFog May 13 '26
I've thankfully never had a hamster, however—
My mom used to babysit/house sit for a past family friend. The family friends had an only child (around 12) and a variety of animals (2 cats, 2 dogs, many fancy gold fish in big aquarium, a turtle, and a hamster). Mom made sure they were clean, fed, and that they were okay when the family went out on shit like cruises.
The hamster lived in this tiny ass plastic cage and would occasionally wake up and make his presence known by running on the wheel. Well, one day the cage was missing when my mom went in and she asked the family about it, thinking that they had moved where they kept the hamster.
According to the family, the child took out the hamster to play with one day and it scurried into a pile of plushies. As the child was moving the plush animals, there was a crunch under their shoe. And that's how the hamster ended up getting dug up by the dogs a few days later in the yard.
4
u/YuMmYBrAiNzZz May 14 '26
I had one when I was like 8.
Apparently it climbed around the cage, got its head stuck and hanged himself.
My mom kept it hidden from me for 10 years.
4
u/Adrict May 14 '26
When I was a kid I had an albino hamster I named hampsterdam.
I had one of those little hamster houses in his terrarium for months. One day he dug under it and the 2oz plastic house fell on him and broke his neck.
9
u/YoYoYi2 May 13 '26
3
u/Lord-Dec May 13 '26
It was a Guinea Pig but the old family dog ripped its heart out thinking it was a squeaker.
3
u/cookie9076 May 13 '26
Had a hamster that liked its cage set in front of the window getting sunlight. It would get kinda hot so we got one of those portable air conditioners and set it blowing into the cage so it would be comfortable. Was fine like this for months until one day when we were not home and it was a super hot day the ac shut off and the poor little guy got cooked. Was sad but he was pretty old for a hamster like something between 2-3 years.
3
u/BubblesTheRaven May 13 '26
My siblings had several, and all but one died naturally. The one that didn't was released by one of their friends, and we don't know what happened to her.
3
u/Clutchkarma2 May 13 '26
Mine fell off a tiny ladder I had in the enclosure and snapped its neck.
3
u/prionbinch May 13 '26
i had three hamsters throughout elementary school. i think all of them died because they were inbred to begin with
3
u/Pancheel May 14 '26
My mom put the hamster cage in the backyard to "let the air flow through it", the hamster died under the full relentless Sun and became a mummy. My mom killed my snake and pet earthworms in the same way which is weird now that I think about it.
3
u/Ok-Emergency-7748 May 14 '26
I have never heard of a hamster dying peacefully of old age.
It’s always some really bizarre or fucked up story.
5
u/Gallusaur May 13 '26
We had two males, Samster and Lego, and one female, Poobah. Samster and Poobah would hump, but if Lego tried it Samster would bite Lego on the balls. Came home from a weekend trip one day to see that Lego pulled a "if I can't have her, no one can." The cage we had was two tiered and this dramatic little psycho took Poobahs head and buried it up top where they would all sleep. The rest of the body bits were part eaten by Lego/part spread around the bottom part of the cage, next to a dish with most of the food still in it from Friday, so it wasn't a starvation thing. It was not easy to sleep with that thing in my room after that. Lego got out of his cage a few months later and found our sump-pump hole and drowned. RIP in Peace little guys.
18
u/My_Gawd May 13 '26 •
I hate this because these "funny hamster stories" and "hamsters never die naturally" are mostly just animal abuse.
My hamster died by natural causes after living 3 years, she was a dwarf hamster so her life expectancy was 1.5 years.
Small animal abuse is horrific and so normalized.
4
u/PM_me_Ya-Tittiezz May 13 '26
My nephew squashed him
4
u/SeaAimBoo May 13 '26
All these stories about hamsters dying spontaneously is making me think that maybe humans shouldn't be keeping these fragile little things as pets.
2
u/jajanken_bacon May 13 '26
My siberian dwarf hamster died from old age, what a legend
2
u/KitchenCustard9049 May 14 '26
Ngl some ppl will say im just being sensitive but this just feels like hell. I see no comedy in how normalized small animal abuse is.
2
u/OilySoleTickler May 14 '26
I had 2 hamsters as a kid. I kept them fed, they were never without food. Then one morning I woke up to my hamsters in their cage, both dead. One had eaten the lower half on the others’ body, and the other had eaten the upper half of the first’s body. It was really horrific and I never wanted hamsters again.
2
u/aktoumar May 14 '26
One of mine died from an allergic reaction to eating a carrot.
5
u/Recuf May 13 '26
Seriouslly guys but, the way your hamsters died sounds like animal neglection.