Female Hamster Froze - In Heat or Otherwise?

[squirchel]

Hi everyone, looking for some help with this.

Yesterday when I got home in the evening, I found my hammie Zoey (girl) was laying flat and quite stiff in her sand bowl, with her eyes open and ears down. I talked to her and pet her and even flipped her on her side but there was no response.

I then picked her up out of the sand bowl and put her on her bedding, and continued to pet her and talk to her. After about a minute or two (from the time I found her like this), she suddenly snapped out of it and ran off. The rest of the night she was totally back to normal - ate, drank, played and ran on her wheel. We even took her out for her usual run-around the bed for playtime before we headed to work.

I've read that hammies sometimes freeze when they're startled, or for females when they are in heat. The part that scares me is that her ears were down and she was quite stiff. Thank goodness she seemed totally okay afterwards.

I guess my question is: what happened? Would be grateful for all your input as I'm quite worried

[souffle]

It sounds like she did get a scare - maybe saw you out the corner of her eye and the natural response for hamsters is to freeze and play dead if they can't escape. She sounds to be OK now.
Females in heat stand with the tail straight up and with a very glazed expression on their faces!

[hamtarokid]

Ugh, my hamster did this the first day we had him. I guess I burst out of my room too quickly and frightened him. It's really freaky when they won't move like that. I panicked and thought he had died. :P He's fine now though.