Is my hamster partly blind??

[hamsterluver11]

I got my hamster Monty on thursday. he is brown and white, and on the way home i noticed his eyes were pink and i thought that was strange since he isnt completely white. Anyway, i was holding him today and i noticed that only one eye ispink and the other is normal black. Is this just a cute little thing or is he blind in one eye?

[squishyhammy]

I've had this in a cream Syrian. The black eye may just be a very deep red. I'm pretty sure she wasn't blind.

[evel_lin]

you can get hamsters with pink eyes that aren't white It can also depend on the light, I've got a black eyed cream boy but he's got a red glow to his eyes in certain lights because of probably having the white belly gene.

Having pink eyes won't make a lot of difference to a hamsters vision as it's quite poor anyway.

[hamsterluver11]

wow that is such a relief, I thought i was being over protective but i just wanted to check

[Munchalot]

They don't have to be white to have pink eyes. There are many colours in hamsters that have with red/pink eyes as part of their genetics.

I've seen quite a lot of bi-coloured eyes too. I've seen several in the shop where I work. it's quite odd. Sometimes one eye is simply darker than the other, and when you hold the hammie up to the light you can see that the 'black' eye is just a really dark red.
I had one hammie a few weeks ago in the shop who was quite unusual. It's normally subtle, but she had such contrasting eyes. One was a really bright, vivid pinky-red, while the other was so dark, it really did look black, even in the light.

But as already mentioned, hams do have rather poor eyesight anyway. It is said that red-eyed hamsters are considered to have a slightly poorer eyesight than those with black eyes. The odd-eyed hamster I mentioned was funny like that, she only seemed to notice my hand when it approached her on her side with the black eye. If my hand came at her from the side with the red one, she wouldn't notice until I touched her, and she would jump as though surprised. But then that might be because her eye was such a bright pink. A darker-eyed hamster might not be the same.
Who can say.

It wouldn't really hinder him if he was partially blind, hamsters are pretty good at adapting. Their eyesight really is quite poor. They seem to rely more on their sense of smell, hearing and taste than their sight.