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Old 10-06-2019, 05:18 AM   #1
kodak
 
Join Date: Oct 2019
Posts: 1
Default Syrian hamster obsessed with wheel?

Hi, looking for advice from experienced hamster owners please. I have a 9 week old female syrian hamster (my first hamster) and she's currently in a small cage while I'm looking for a larger one. (I'm actually going to keep the small cage when she moves into a larger one, and build a tunnel connecting the 2 cages so she has even more room). But she's obsessed with her wheel. I know it's healthy and normal for them to run long distances on it, but it's nonstop. She can go on it all day. Normally she goes on in 5-20 second bursts, then stops and sniffs around as if she's interested in other parts of the cage, but then goes straight back to the wheel. Sometimes she almost goes to step off the wheel then changes her mind and goes back. I got worried that she was so addicted to the wheel that she was forgetting to go upstairs for water so I started dropping cucumber in the cage for her to eat cos its high in water. The cage isn't amazing but it's got a lot of fun stuff for the limited space it has. I put a couple tunnels made of toilet paper rolls, an edible maze, and lots of burrowing material on top of her bedding (hamster friendly hay on top of care fresh), as well as hiding food in fun spots around the cage, but she still only seems interested in the wheel itself.

I'm going to get her a new cage ASAP with loads of fun features, and as soon as she trusts me enough I'm going to start hamster proofing the room in order to let her out to explore the room without being in a ball. But what is the reason that shes' not really taking any interest in any of the other features in the cage? I don't even think she spends any time burrowing. I did notice that during my sleep all of the pieces of cucumber I'd hidden in the tunnels had been eaten. But I suspect she just ran back to the wheel straight after. This might be far out, but I'm worried she might be confusing the wheel for actual movement, and that when she stops to sniff and stands on her hind legs kind of looking at stuff in her cage, then goes back to the wheel, she's actually trying to get to the locations she's sniffing but doesn't understand running on the wheel wont get her there. THe reason I think this is cos one time I was putting my hand in her cage to give her a treat from my hand but I bumped the cage loudly by accident, and she got scared and started running on her wheel frantically as if she thought she could get away by doing that. Do hamsters think they're genuinely covering space while going on the wheel? Or do they understand that their location doens't actually change and that they don't actually go anywhere?

Soz for rambling just really want advice, thanks
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wheel, cage, hamster, shes, back, room, fun, interested, straight, stuff, features, space, understand, running, syrian, reason, cucumber, started, cos, water, tunnels, burrowing, top, worried, time

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