Spinning In Robos

[mollldoll]

Ive been thinking more and more about how my two oldest female robos passed away and would like to know if anyone has experianced the same thing? This was last year.

My two girls were sisters but lived seperatly and were both around 1yr 5months old- one week I noticed Khaos started to walk in circles and it got pergorssivley worse - she wouldent sleep she just span round on the spot, if she wanted to walk some where to drink or eat it was in a circle after the day It didnt stop so i booked a vets appointment for later on the next day - all through the night she was spinning and all through the next day, the vet had NO idea what was wrong and when i asked if it could be an ear infeciton she said it looked like it was nurological. We came to the decision to get her PTS because the way she was spinning was harming her legs and wearing her down.

I had noticed slight spinning for a 1 hours period in khaos 3 weeks before this happened but it was only slight and it wore off. The very next week on exactly the same day as Khaos was Doom started spinning, the same thing happened and I waited an extra day - I just wanted her to stop but it was so bad I booked another vets appointment and went through the same process as before.

The thing that puzzels me is that i have read this happens to some white faces robos down to a certain gene - but my girls were not white faced.

I put Doom in a small 'hospital' tank as she was going up and down her 4ft tank and wasnt near her water - this video shows her in mild spin as it got allot worse than this.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v715/ ... Video5.flv

[Bunsey]

I agree with the vet - it's probably neurological. This is very common in hybrid hamsters (Winter white + Campbell = hybrid), but i've never heard of it in robos to be honest. Robos cannot be hybrids. It looks as though she probably had a brain tumour or something happen in the brain like a tumour/aneurysm, but i'm no neurologist i'm affraid.

The only other thing is maybe a stroke, but i've seen a lot of strokes in hamsters, inc. robos and that never happened. A stroke usually just looks like the loss of use of one or more legs and then death in a couple of days. I think a stroke is unlikely from looking at that video.

How weird that it happened to them both at the same time!