[cypher]

Don't get me wrong, I do think we can interact with our hams, some never really enjoy human contact & may be a bit more like fish in the sense of just a pet to watch but most come to trust us, enjoy our company & interact with us in their own way.
My feeling about the clicker training type thing is it's really more suited to pack animals that are only comfortable knowing their place in the group so the owner being the alpha/boss & training them works just fine.
Hams are solitary animals for the most part & so I think their relationship is different & I kind of see it as a privilege when they allow us to be part of their lives
Keeping a ham as a pet is never going to be that close to a natural life but we can do our best to make it as natural & stimulating as possible for them.
Enrichment, in other words making the cage as interesting as possible with lots of things to explore, lots of substrate to dig in & suitably safe things to climb around on, different surfaces & textures, the addition of things like safe dried herbs & flowers in areas of the cage, scatter feeding or hiding their food so they have to forage rather than just taking it from the bowl are all things that can make their life a lot more fun for them to enjoy & us to watch.
I think if a ham is happy in it's cage & taming is done at their pace they mostly soon become comfortable with us talking to them, then holding & stroking them, all my boys have enjoyed stroking & cuddles, my girls some but not so much! They tend to be more hyper but still enjoy handling, mostly using me as a climbing frame & something to explore!
I try to make play areas similar to the cage as much as is practical, scatter substrate around for them to have a little dig or forage in & lots of things for them to explore.
I don't think our needs are purely selfish, yes we want to enjoy them but if we take the time to get to know them & what they like then they will want to be with us & enjoy our company, a ham that runs to the door to greet you & climb into your hand is only doing that because it wants to! If a ham turns out to be one that prefers to have less contact & spend more time doing it's own thing then that's the way I let it be.
I always "tame" to the point where i can handle a ham whatever their preferences simply so I can do health checks without them becoming stressed out, how much further things go depends entirely on the individual ham. The amount of time we spend with them will depend on the individual too but it's something that you can build up gradually & as long as your ham is looking alert, ears up & not held back, not running around in a panicky mode rather then just exploring & not trying to hide or excessively washing it's face (an odd sign of nerves!) you can usually be sure your ham is enjoying it's time out.
Hope that makes sense & helps a bit!