hamster went crazy

[JLee]

I have a male syrian hamster who is very calm. He is class pet in my preschool class mainly 4 yr olds and is used to noise and weird smells and does not have a problem with being handled by random people he even lets the children handle him without a problem.
I usually bring him home on the weekend and the other day I had a friend over at the house and i was carrying Oreo around the house when my friend asked if she could hold him i passed him to her and before he even touched her hand he completely freaked out he jumped from her hands and was doing flips and acrobatics to get away from her. lucky she was sitting in a bed when it happened so he had a soft landing but I just picked him back up and he was calm again like the incident never happened. What was that about? It was like he saw the devil or something.

[squishyhammy]

Hmmm strange.... I know you said he's used to strange smells but does your friend have any pets as he may be able to smell them and at that moment felt it was intimidating.

[Cupcake]

Echoing what squishyhammy said, they can smell really well! my hamster would not approach me if I played with my dog and haven't washed my hands, she just walks around my hands but refuses to walk on them. As soon as my hands are clean and not smelling like dog, she's all over me

[Eriklover555]

I luckily don't have this problem, but it makes sense that maybe there was the smell of something threatening on that person's hands. Maybe she was nervous or excited? That could excrete some kind of smell, too.