Can Hamsters be depressed? I need to do more research into certain animals. Not many people are googling symptoms of depression for hamsters, at least at the age of 10 I wasn't.
I love animals, except birds, I have a HUGE fear of birds. That's another story that we won't get into right now. When I was a child my parents gifted me a hamster, I named him Teddy, he was super cute with fur the color of caramel. He loved to play in the mazes I created and on the spinning wheel in his cage. So a few nights of him being a part of our family, I woke up to noises of banging in his cage. I didn't think anything of it, maybe he was going extra hard on his wheel to work off dinner. The following night I heard the same noise. I turned on the light to find Teddy hanging from the top of his cage by his paws. He saw me staring and then just dropped to the bottom. Freaked out, I ran into my parents room and told them what Teddy was doing...he was trying to hurt himself. Of course being 10, they thought my imagination was getting the best of me, so the next night I woke them up so they could see it for themselves. It was confirmed, Teddy was trying to hurt himself. Why else would a seemingly happy animal hang from the top of a cage and consistently drop over and over again? I was so upset.
As if Teddy knew the inevitable of his fate, aka me returning a suicidal hamster to the pet store, one night I hear my dad scream and then a bang. Immediately I ran into my parents room, wondering what happened. He responded with, "something was on my face, I smacked it and it flew across the room and hit the wall." I knew then it wasn't just "something", it was Teddy. My dad and mom knew it too. My dad then apologized for flinging Teddy as he didn't know what it was crawling on him in the dark. It also goes to show how agile and determined Teddy was. He broke out of his cage, crawled across the hallway to my parents room got up to the bed somehow and was crossing over my dad. To do what? I don't know, but my guess is to jump out of the window next to my dad. I'm not sure why he tried to kill himself by jumping from the top of the cage or trying to jump over my dad to go out the window. I loved Teddy, but apparently hamsters can get depressed too. Obviously the saying doesn't apply just to Annie and Jay Z, it was a hard knock life for Teddy as well.
PS- Teddy was fine, we took him back to the pet store in the following days. I also got another hamster and named him "Teddy II". Clearly my imagination only went so far in regards to pet names.
His cage looked similar to this one. Maybe he was mad it was purple?
