Hamster Age Equivalents As Estimated by Lifespans on Hamster Central

[Catherine Spark]

I agree - wish they lived longer too! But there's something very special about even that - you make each day count with them because of their short lives. Don't you think so?

Eleanor - perhaps you could celebrate your hamster's birthdays with edible treats? Then their cages wouldn't get cluttered if you decided to celebrate every ten days!

I suppose my calculations still don't explain why some hamsters, like Gamina's hamster Cat, could live to 182 hamster years! Maybe with some hamsters the aging process almost tails off in rate once they get past a certain age. In that sense, those hamsters would actually have more efficient bodies than humans, given their naturally faster aging rate. Hmmm...it is a mystery. Still...a ham can be glad of 182 birthday parties! Imagine the (alfalfa) cake...

I'll try Syrian females just now, as I have a window of time, and then winter whites as well, since Katty Sheldon mentioned them And if anyone else has a different way of calculating/different estimations, I'd be really interested to hear them and compare

Oh wait...just got to do the washing up first, apparently...

[Erin Loves Dwarf Hamsters]

Wow this is very interesting! It doesnt really matter if it is off slightly either as when it comes down to it time is a creation of man Someone needs to do robos too at some point but there would have to be a lot of data collected first

[fluffymunchkins]

Your estimations sound about right to me, I've always estimated 6 months to equal about 20 hamster years.

Unfortunately it makes their lives seem so very short, yet it does make you appreciate just how ancient some of our little ones really are.
For example Treo should be equilvelent to about 70 years old now. My eldest living one to date, Peggy, would have been equilvelent to 120 years.

[Gizmodo ^_^]

Originally Posted by fluffymunchkins

Your estimations sound about right to me, I've always estimated 6 months to equal about 20 hamster years.

Unfortunately it makes their lives seem so very short, yet it does make you appreciate just how ancient some of our little ones really are.
For example Treo should be equilvelent to about 70 years old now. My eldest living one to date, Peggy, would have been equilvelent to 120 years.

Wow :O all mine must be pretty oldies

Hattie&Mabel are 16 months
Fudge 18 Months
Bruno About 13 Months
Pip 20 Months
xD

[Erin Loves Dwarf Hamsters]

Thats a point that makes my lot fairly mature
By working it out that 10 Days makes a hamster year (28 x Hamster Age in Months/10) my lot are about -

K&J - Nearly 17
Trevor - 22
Pippy - 33
C&T - 42
Thistle - 42

O_O

[Catherine Spark]

Hi, sorry for the long delay! Gizmodo and Erin, yours sound like they are maturing, but with a bit of luck they should still have life left in them yet!

I've just finished the Syrian female hamsters' calculations. As someone has mentioned in the other thread, pyometra was a relatively common cause of death. I considered eliminating the ones with pyometra from my calculations, but since I included all male Syrians with specified species, sex and age of death in my other calculations, I kept the females with Pyometra in.

As with the males, all the hamsters included in my calculations had to have a specified, definite age of death, and they had to be specified as syrian and female. The ages of death were much more varied, ranging from about four months, I think, to eight years.

The average for females came out as 24 months, rounded to the nearest whole number. Which, if ten days makes one hamster year, would be about seventy three years old.

So slightly less for females, but roughly the same. So I think for Syrians at least, ten days to one hamster year seems to generally hold true (even if some of them are living well into their hundreds - and in the case of the eight year old hamster, into their TWO hundreds!). Perhaps the variability in longevity, when compared to humans, might partly be due to the fact that natural selection has been working on hamsters for quite a lot longer than humans...? I'm not sure.

[gellerbing]

this is interesting but also quite sad
coco is 16 months old but as i suck at maths i dont know what age in our years that would make her, shes still really lively though lol

[Catherine Spark]

Gellerbing: Erin Loves Dwarf Hamsters came up with a neat little formula for working it out quickly, if 10 days is roughly equivalent to one hamster year:

(28 days x Hamster Age in Months/10).

28 days because that is very roughly the number of days in each month, then times that by the number of months your hamster has lived, which will give you roughly the number of days old they are. Then to turn that into hamster years you divide the resulting number by ten, assuming 10 days = 1 hamster year.

Which would make coco abuot (28 days x 16 months)/10 hamster years old = 44.8 hamster years old.

So about middle age - hopefully a few years left in her yet!

[Nush]

Hi Catherine, I think this is really very interesting. Spinny is a teenager - you can tell because she's a little madam sometimes. She thinks she's a diva

I was just wondering do you take into account the difference in human life expectancy. Women tend to live longer than men and I found this on wikipedia: List of countries by life expectancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wouldn't that change the 10 day average for females?

[Catherine Spark]

Hi Nush - Spinny sounds really cute and funny! I remember Oakie as a teenager - scent marking everything, like he'd just discovered he was a man

I think it would be difficult to say for hamsters if it made a difference. It seems that in Syrian hamsters at least, males live longer. I suspect that is because, unlike human females, hamster females are prone to pyometra, and that was very often the cause of death for them.

I had considered not including the pyometra statistics as they weren't a 'natural' cause of death, but since I included all causes of death in males - natural or unnatural, I kept them in, and the average came out as 24 months as opposed to 26 months. I do wonder though, if the females who didn't have pyometra would come out as living longer than the males...?

In terms of different life expectancies for different populations, I would guess it does make a difference. Am I right in thinking that better developed countries have a greater average life expectancy? I would guess this would be similar in hamsters. Like, rescue hamsters, unless very robust, might generally have a shorter life expectancy if they had a really bad start in life. Also breeding (but that would be eugenics in humans, so there are ethical issues equating the two), and quality of care (although maybe not so important as breeding and background, since even with the best of care, a bad start may cause irreversible problems, and there may be genetic problems if breeding is irresponsible or unfortunate).

Basically I decided, for this round at least, to take averages for each gender irrespective of cause of death or background, as that way I would get the most data. I could do some more studies, but it may be slow work as I have a lot on at the moment. But if you wanted to have a go I'd be really interested to see what you come up up with

I hope that answers your question - and that it makes sense for that matter!