Yay! Hamster post! I love reading about your hamsters. Delightful beings.

Awww!

She's lovely!

She's a cute one. Given her vision, I'm wondering how one might determine exactly what she can see (in fact, there are tests that make sense, but a hamster probably finds visual psychophysics even more boring than most humans do).

Yow! Needed a unicorn chaser about now. Does putting various food-scented things near her hamster ball affect her navigation?

Bill Stewart, #5: Oh yes. She definitely shares the widespread hamster tropism for Anything With Olive Oil On It.

I wonder if the fact that hamsters love hamster balls so much is related to the fact that mice have a natural instinct to run in wheels?

Benjamin Wolfe #4: Given her vision, I'm wondering how one might determine exactly what she can see

Well, that would depend on how well a normal hamster can see. (WP notes them as nearsighted and "colorblind"; I assume they mean dichromatic like most mammals.) Personally, I'd pick an item or two apiece from "interesting" and "aversive" categories (odorless and silent, natch), and start with a known-normal hamster to figure out their maximum range for distinguishing the test items. Then go back to the test hamster and work inward from that distance.

Benjamin Wolfe: Hamsters tend to be bored by anything you want them to do, and interested in anything they're exploring on their own. They're even more interested if it smells like food, or can be used to escape from their cage.

I figure Zerika's so enthusiastic about running in her hamsterball because it combines exploration (which all hamsters like) with always having walls nearby (which she likes).

I wish there were more studies of eyesight in hamsters. I'm now wondering whether at least one of my previous hamsters, Aggie Maggie, also had vision problems.

One thing Zerika shares with Aggie Maggie: a fancy nonstandard fur color and texture. Those come with intricate breeding problems in a species that's already inbred. I've noticed that the list of potential defects from bad crossbreeding are all impossible to ignore, like being born eyeless, or having one-fourth of the pups die in utero. Nobody mentions nonlethal problems like night terrors, which some Syrians definitely have. (I should write about that.)

Poor vision could very easily go unnoticed, since it's not an essential ability for cage-bred Syrians -- the young'uns start foraging before their eyes are open.

Understand that there are people in this genre who hate you, and who do not want you here, and who will hurt you if they can. Do not tolerate their intolerance. Don’t be “fair and balanced.” Tell them they’re unwelcome. Make them uncomfortable. Shout them down. Kick them out. Fucking fight.

#10, hugely: I recognize that; it's from the third-to-last paragraph of Nora Jemisin's angry, excellent Wiscon Guest of Honor speech, delivered last night. We weren't at Wiscon, but I read it on her blog this morning.

I suspect you didn't mean to drop it into a thread about our hamster. Could you let me know where you actually meant to post it?

If that’s a spammer, they’ve seriously upped their comment-using-random-Internet-text game.

TNH @9: I figure Zerika's so enthusiastic about running in her hamsterball because it combines exploration (which all hamsters like) with always having walls nearby (which she likes).

Presumably also because it resembles the Orb.

Do keep her away from waterfalls that might lead to the Paths of the Dead, though. A hamster ball might not be as effective padding as a horse.

So -- how does one socialize a mostly-blind hamster?

They're even more interested if it smells like food, or can be used to escape from their cage.

Our hamster story--one morning, cage door is standing open; the hamster is gone. Six months later, I open the bin in which we store dry catfood, and there, fat and happy, is the hamster.

Rea @16, heh. Your hamster must have thought s/he was in heaven.

So does the ball change colours with her mood? Or is the clear/colourless the "hungry" colour, and thus constant? ;)

#16 ::: rea

How did the hamster manage to not die of thirst?

Nancy @ 19--I have no idea where she was getting water. She couldn't have spent 6 months in the bin--you'd think we'd have noticed. On the other hand, we were a 3-cat household in those days, and two of them at least were accomplished rodent-killers, so how she could have lurked around the house is a mystery. And those 6 months included a Michigan winter, so I'm not sure how the hamster could have gone outdoors. Maybe water from the cat bowl,evading the cats somehow, or climbing up to the sink in the dead of night?

We had a hamster disappear completely from our last apartment in Lawrence, KS. Never found her, never found remains. At the same time a large kitchen knife and one of Jim's sneakers disappeared. We figure she took a shelter and defense when she left.

We had no cats at the time.

She was a fairly large, natural Syrian hamster (tannish with white markings).

Teresa Nielsen Hayden @9: Nobody mentions nonlethal problems like night terrors, which some Syrians definitely have. (I should write about that.)

Yes, please.

I had a blind guinea pig. Cataracts in both eyes, nearly from birth. Only earthly differences I could see between her and the "normal" guinea pigs was that she wasn't startled by random motion in the room, and you had to brush a treat against her whiskers to let her know it was there.

Her name was Guiness. Because she was black and tan.

Paula Helm Murray #21: At the same time a large kitchen knife and one of Jim's sneakers disappeared. We figure she took a shelter and defense

Now that is giving me some bizarre imagery... in proportion, that's a pretty dang BFS!

I suppose socializing a blind hamster is more difficult than capitalizing one.

iamnothing @24: Here, have this internet I just happen to have lying around.

I suspect it's harder in the US than it is in the rest of the world.

TNH at 9: There's some really cool (for vision scientist values of cool) work on hamster vision that I can turn up with access to journal databases. On very quick perusal, it looks like their visual systems have been well-studied, but mostly a few decades ago (I'm looking at a paper from 1980). Their acuity is comparatively lousy - to quote the paper, "[hamsters] are nocturnal animals with a poor ability to distinguish stationary objects on the basis of visual cues."

If you'd like more, let me know and I'm happy to snag a pile of PDFs for you.

Benjamin wrote "hamster vision" and this moose immediately thought of Hamster Week and the film crew on the baggage conveyor.

This.

Well, I had to find out what "Hamster Weken" was, and whether it would actually be good for my hamster.
Turns out "Hamster Weken" actually means "The Weeks In Which You Are Encouraged to Engage in Hamstering, aka Hoarding".
Sale Days, IOW.
http://expatcatlife.blogspot.com/2011/01/where-hamster-is-verb.html

I must be getting old. Why am I the first to post this link:
http://www.hampsterdance.com/classics/originaldance.htm

John #28:

Perhaps because, for some of us, mere mention of that site is enough to get an earworm stuck in our heads?

John, it's probably not because you're getting old. It's probably because you never grew up.

fidelio @25: thanks.

Uh, that picture...it looks like she is near the edge of a table. Take care she doesn't roll off, okay?

Alas, Zerika.

She died this morning, easily and suddenly -- just fell over on her side while making her way from her igloo to her area of necessity.

Her death was not a surprise. She'd been having increasingly diabetic symptoms for some time (I put her on a reduced-carbohydrate diet, which helped for a while), and had begun having spells of confusion and fatigue. Otherwise she remained the cheerful, confident, optimistic creature she'd been all her life.

Her sepulchral tea-tin will be interred this afternoon in the back yard: ave atque vale.

She were a fine tiny beastie, she were.

I'm sad to hear of her passing, but glad that she went quickly and easily, after a happy hamster-standard lifespan. Ave et vale, Zerika.

I'm sorry for your loss. It sounds like she had a good life and an easy passing.