Clingy Hamster

[Razor]

Hi!

I guess this is not the kind of question most hamster owners would be asking, but I'm really confused right now.

The story goes like this- My hamster, Gaby, a winter white, who's been with me for about 6 weeks now has a very playful and cuddly personality. She had been really curious and confident right from the start, and was nearly fully tame in under two weeks. She has always loved being cuddled with and handled. I say this because of several behavioral traits I have noticed, including:

1. Food is never a motivation for her to climb onto my hands or be picked up.
2. Food is never a motivation while being handled. This means, even I were to offer her favorite treat, sunflower seeds, when she's on my hands, she will ignore it and just continue running hand to hand in 9/10 cases.
3. If I feed her a treat in the cage, say Cheese, she would eat it as long as I am holding it. The moment I place it down, she ignores it and tries to climb up my hands.
4. She follows me from within her cage, following my footsteps and tries to climb along the glass face. Check GIF attached below. She will do this until the I place my hand inside and pick her up.
5. If I still don't respond to her, she starts chewing on the bar until either I pick her up or she realizes I'm either asleep or not around anymore. This I'm trying to train her not to do by gently blowing at her and also placing paper straws around the bars.

So this was until let's say a few days ago. But now that she's fully tame, I figured it's time to start doing proper, full health check, including scruffing her to inspect her teeth. Two things evolved after this.

1. First thing she does after the scruffing was give me a quick nip, almost like That's for scruffing me human! and then goes back to playing like normal.
2. Now the only thing she ever cares for is to be handled.

Simply stated, if she's awake, she needs to be handled. Otherwise she throws a tantrum inside the cage! If I place my hand near the cage, she goes straight for it and climbs on. So after, say 15 minutes of handling her, if I were to try to return her to the cage, she won't get off my hand. In fact she will just sit on my palm waiting to be lifted again. If I don't react, she would quickly nip me again Pick me up Hooman! I didn't say I'm done playing with you! She then waits for a few seconds. If I don't pick her up, she nips again. But if I were to pick her up, she is super happy again and runs all over me.

I usually take her out on an average of 20-40 minutes everyday. Let her run around in this DIY playpen I made using cardboard or on my bed. She preferred spending this time with me rather than run around in the play area. I mean like 80% of her time. Here's an example of this.


So my question is this, Is this behavior something to be concerned about? Should I do something to make her less clingy or is it natural (sometimes)?

Note that I have a detolf cage, so she has plenty of space to run within the cage as well. She was store-bought and used to live alone in the cage at the time of purchase. Also note that I didn't find anything off in her when I did a health check.

This is her going crazy to be picked up.
ezgif.com-resize (2).gif

[cypher]

She is very sweet I wouldn't really class her behaviour as particularly unusual though, Russian hams can be very people orientated & active during the day needing lots to keep them occupied.
Her behaviour on your bed looks totally natural to me, have you tried making her a proper playpen on the floor with lots of things to explore & play with?
I've only had one female Russian & she was pretty demanding! She would often spend all day in her playpen & go nuts if I had to put her back in her cage too.
Definitely nothing to worry about but you could try to see if you can find things she enjoys doing in a playpen & if you have space in the cage give her more to do in there too.

[Razor]

Thanks for the reply Cypher! She is indeed! That's good to know that it's a very Russian hamster behavior. Now she practically jumps up onto my hand if I hold it about 5 cm above and patiently waits, or tries to hang onto to my fingers and climb up. It's just adorable watch her do this. Will add a video of this sometime soon to the photo thread I have for her.

I bought her a bunch of new toys yesterday and lubed her wheel with vegetable oil. I also switched to scatter feeding now. This seems to keep her occupied for extended periods of time and she clearly seems to enjoy running around searching for the food. And she has also been running a lot on the wheel again! I am planning to buy a proper playpen soon, instead on the DIY one I use.

On a side note, since I did mention that she was store bought, I was wondering if you know what's the possibility of her being pure-bred? The guy I bought it from claims she's not a hybrid and source the hamsters from good breeders. But well, that's the salesman in him talking after all. But then again, I don't seem to be able to find traits of the two species though. She does have a very roman looking nose profile, large eyes and small ears and basically looks like a ball of fur with a head. I mean, all the appearance characteristics of a winter white. Moreover, the store sells winter whites in only three colors (The three usual WW colors) and haven't seen any non WW colors/patterns.

[cypher]

I can't really say as I know nothing about breeding & pet shop practises in Sweden but personally I tend to have my doubts about any claims by pet shops that Russian hamsters are pure WW or Campbell, it just seems unlikely.