Housing Syrians Together? Confused...

[EmmaAndChester]

Through Sci-hub a friend of mine from another forum showed it to me and it's awesome. It's a search engine for accessing research papers without having to buy them. Now I'm all for supporting research by buying papers, but a lot the time it'd be a waste of money (like it would have been here) or it's too expensive, so Sci-hub is the way to go.

ETA: sorry, just reading over my last posts on here and realised I made a typo, whoops. They were housed together up until the age of 8 weeks, not 5.

[Pebbles82]

That is the problem with scientific studies - they often euthanise the hamsters after testing something. I don't see why they have to do that. They could retire them to nice homes. It is all very clinical and doesn't seem to benefit anyone. I have learned more from owning a hamster than reading research. There has been the odd bit of research that I've found helpful or interesting - but again the hamsters were euthanised afterwards for seemingly no reason other than they didn't need them any more.

I think it is scientific habit Chesca, rather than society as a whole. It's a mentality that this is what they do/how they do it for the purpose of scientific research and so it's allowed. The powers that be don't accept research unless it's done under strict controls. The irony is, strict controls don't allow the hamsters to behave normally really.

Good tip there Emma.

[chesca_27]

Originally Posted by Drago

Chesca I agree with you wholeheartedly. It's simply disgusting the lack of care there is towards small animals. I sort of want to contact whoever conducted this study and ask them to clarify that they only benefit when young, and to perhaps change the name of the study so there's no misconceptions. I knew in my gut it had to do with age

I really hate how small animals are treated as inferior because they are smaller. It should have nothing to do with size, every pet deserves the same level of care and love. I really feel like writing an email to them to explain why the Syrians benefitted from social housing in this situation.

Originally Posted by flowerfairy

Excellent post chesca.

Thank you .

Originally Posted by Hamsterita

Thanks EmmaAndChester, how did you find it exactly?

Now that everything is clarified, I would like to know if Miss Amy P. Ross, Kim L. Huhman and CIA work for a Pet Store chain or what. Maybe they were just traumatized by a childhood experience and they were trying to prove that they did good keeping two syrians together or something.

This shouldn't be approved to be published on a scientific media.

I wouldn't be surprised if they worked for a pet store or if a pet store funded it, to be honest! Totally agree, the study is VERY misleading to potential hamster owners.

Originally Posted by Serendipity7000

That is the problem with scientific studies - they often euthanise the hamsters after testing something. I don't see why they have to do that. They could retire them to nice homes. It is all very clinical and doesn't seem to benefit anyone. I have learned more from owning a hamster than reading research. There has been the odd bit of research that I've found helpful or interesting - but again the hamsters were euthanised afterwards for seemingly no reason other than they didn't need them any more.

I think it is scientific habit Chesca, rather than society as a whole. It's a mentality that this is what they do/how they do it for the purpose of scientific research and so it's allowed. The powers that be don't accept research unless it's done under strict controls. The irony is, strict controls don't allow the hamsters to behave normally really.

Good tip there Emma.

I really think animal testing as a whole needs to be banned. There are other, cheaper alternatives, where nothing is harmed. The cherry on the top is they're being cruel to hamsters for a study that won't benefit any hamster.

I think society still plays a role, otherwise there wouldn't be people dumping their pets on the street or 'releasing' their hamsters into the 'wild' for some cat to find it. I agree that controlling a hamster won't allow it to behave correctly. Cage size for instance will affect a hamster a lot, which may have influenced the results of this awful study.