What is it with "1 hammy + 1 hammy = fight fight fight!!!"?

Question

you people seriously just go with what your told huh? if you get a hamster and were told it bites, you woudn't try to touch it. hamsters just like all others can be trained. i have 4 females in one cage, and i have 7 males in another (extra large cages so dont start on that). not all hamsters are lone rangers. but most peopl dont give them the chance. before you say they WILL fight and sentence them to a life alone, just try it and see what they want.

where do all you guys get this from?

i want websites and everything!!! and dont say experience as every hamster has a different personality, thats not what i'm askin here...

Answer 1

I'm just wondering do you have Dwarf hamsters or Syrian hamsters?

I know that dwarf hamsters can be kept together but I've never owned a Syrian so I don't know.

From what I've heard and research Syrian hamsters don't like other hamsters, but I don't really see why you can't try to keep then together.

So... yea. I would really like to kn ow what type of hamsters you have.

Answer 2

I am positive that you have DWARF hamsters, or very young Syrians.

You also don't need to harass the answers community, we are trying to help animals so they aren't killed by irresponsible owners.

You say extra-large cages, how large are they? Syrians may be kept together is they have AMPLE room to establish territories. Like, a 55+ gallon tank for 2 full-grown. MAYBE.

Answer 3

hamsters fight for territory, when their about 7 months old they begen to fight, thought if there r 2 many hamsters in one cage, they'll fight after a few weeks. its also how they mate. i know this because ive had mny hamsters my self, and when they had babies it wasn't a pretty sight. the mothers ate their children and other baby hamsters had children of their own. after a month only 3 remained. it got to a point where tere were 39 of them roaming around between five cages and an empty fishtank.ive also read it in books. just check google for websites.

Answer 4

On the contrary, I do not believe hamsters can be trained. They fight because of instinct. Dogs for example have instinct, but they can be trained, only because they are not only a lot more intelligent, but also because they are social animals who instinctfully wish to please the owner. See, you can't change instinct, but you can work with it.

Hamsters ARE solitary animals. This is not a personality trait, it is a hamster species trait. ALL hamsters live alone in the wild. However, just because an animal is solitary, does not mean it immediately kills other animals of its kind. During mating for example, most solitary animals can be found coming together in huge groups to find mates.

The fact remains; hamsters are solitary. In the wild, they do not rely on other hamsters to live happily. Something like a monkey might die if it lived alone, so to social animals, this is very important. Assuming hamsters do not NEED other hamsters, it does not mean you can't keep several to a cage. But they are only -tolerating- eachother, not benefiting in any way because it isn't in their nature to benefit from it.

Still, so many hamsters fight and kill in captivity. Why? Well, let's look at the average hamster cage. It's about the size of a deformed cereal box. Any two social animals will feel overcrowded in something so small that even social animals would fight living in that. Have a look at gerbils. Gerbils are social, and should never live alone. Yet so many people have terrible experience with them killing eachother. That's because their cages are much too small!

I personally have kept both syrian and dwarf hamsters together, but each time I used guinea pig cages for them! They were not crowded, and had multiple accessories so they weren't forced to share, and no tension is created, thus no fighting. But to the average hamster owner, who is usually a younger child and a begginer pet owner, they aren't interested in doing something new and risky, they just want the pet. Any pet. Any way. I mean if someone wanted to try keeping multiple hamsters, then sure, it's possible, but most people aren't interested in doing anything like that. And because hamsters are 100% happy alone, this makes them the ideal first pet.

Answer 5

I have had 2 chinese dwalf hamsters that i was told needed each others company after being in the same cage for 2 weeks they were trying to kill each other so i had to split them up. i also know some one else who had 2 chinese dwalf hamsters that had to be split for fighting then i got my little sisters who have 2 normal hamsters that fight if put together thats where i get it from hun

Answer 6

You didn't say what type of hamster you had and this can make a world of difference.

"websites and everything", but you don't want "expierence" - you do realise that websites are someones expierence? Heck, even scientific studies have someones expierence factored in to a certain degree.

I raised Syrians for years (long time ago) - they do fight - even the sweetest ones. I'd never keep these more than one to a cage as adults. In the wild, these are SOLITARY animals that pretty much only come into contact with each other for mating. Housing this species together will actually cause them stress.

Campbells - this is what we currently raise -I've never had a problem housing them together in any combination using large bin cages. In the wild they live in colonies, so keeping them in pairs or greater isn't odd.

Winter Whites, Robovorskis and Chinese - many folks keep these with others of the same species. I haven't tried it, but it should be doable in the right conditions for that particular species.

Answer 7

ill tell u why i say that they fight, i have had a ton of hamsters(including several litters), and let me tell u, when we introduced them all they did was fight. a fight that led to blood(a few scratches with slight blood that i could treat). we set them on a huge island counter and they would look at each other and then attack(i separated them at the first sign!!). males would attack males and females attack females. even the females attacked the males!! we had to keep all of them separate. i have only paired one group of hamsters. two females and one of them had gotten pregnant and then attacked the other and would never go back to sharing again. i know this is out of my experience but each of my hamsters had a different personality that i loved dearly but still they fought. they only wanted me to touch their territory and nothin else. and a lot of people have never had hamsters, they just go with what they have heard. others may not have had excatly what id call experience. u may have had  such good luck cuz they may of been in the same litter or somethin.

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