Hot under the collar over hamsters and the information superhighway
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
The world of animal lovers is not, as you might imagine, always full of sweetness and light. There are times when as animal lovers we can all get a little hot under the collar. We have found that baby hamsters can be a particular trigger in this regard.
We all know that the internet is a wonderful medium that can empower anyone with a computer, a modem and an ISP to become a publisher. It provides the ability for almost anyone to air their thoughts, feelings, views, 
interests and activities not only publicly; but to a global audience! Obviously any tool this powerful must come with some downsides - that’s just one of the laws of nature. You could liken this to the well known truism that there is no such thing as a free lunch or possibly even more relevant - every silver lining has a cloud!
Being well aware of the way of the world and not exactly wet behind the ears it should not really have come as any great surprise to us then to discover that when you put yourself “out there” in any arena where people have strong feelings and care about something a lot, not everyone is going to agree with everything that anybody does or says and that, of course, includes us. That is not a problem to us, in fact, anything more complicated and of more consequence than boiling an egg (actually there are even different opinions on how to do this!) will have a whole gamut of opinions on which is the best way to do it. That is a good thing and by the courteous and constructive sharing of information and views people can modify their behaviour and that is how progress and improvement occurs.
What we were not quite prepared for when we first launched our animal website in November 2007, was the strength of response that can unintentionally be provoked amongst fellow animal lovers. By actions and behaviours that are very well meaning and with the best intentions towards animals and that these are not always expressed courteously or constructively.
Social networking for example is everywhere these days and obviously to have a presence on these sites involves the risk of adverse or inflammatory comments. In our experience YouTube almost has a monopoly on this. I’m 
not saying that YouTube is not a wonderful resource, it is, and it is financially free. It does come though at the price of sometimes ill considered and groundless flame comments being posted, criticising one thing or another in some people’s perceptions of your videos, often without having read the video description box and these comments are mostly left by people who have posted no videos of their own!
YouTube is not the only place where strong opinion is expressed we have found that emails, forums and blogs are just some of the other vehicles by which people will let you know what they think. A good example recently started with what I thought seemed like a good idea, to do a photo journal of the development of a baby hamster in pictures on a daily basis for the first two weeks in the lives of our latest litter of baby hamsters. This started well on day one and day two when we posted some nice pictures of the baby hamsters all huddled up in the nest, pink, hairless and cute in an almost ugly kind of way at this stage. On day 3 the brown stuff hit the fan…
Now we don’t think entering hamster breeding accidentally is big or clever, but despite multiple reassurances that our original dwarf hamster pair were same sex - within two weeks of having them we had we accidentally become hamster breeders. We didn’t think we were big when this happened and we certainly didn’t feel very clever. We know only too well that there are already too many homeless hamsters in the world and that there is very little justification for breeding yet more, particularly by first time or amateur breeders. However, it had 
happened and we couldn’t reverse that. Our first step, of course, was to separate the parents; this resulted in practically demented and agitated behaviour from both mother and father, so we relented and put them back together again. They have been a sweet and happy couple ever since and we have predictably had more litters, most of which we have kept ourselves and any that we have re-homed have been in single sex groups to good homes and with reassurances about no further breeding intentions.
Perhaps we were naïve but we certainly were not aware that there are certain types of baby hamster pictures that some people think should not be shown (or taken?)… Back to the day 3 pictures…
From our experience of our other hamster litters and the bond with the parents that we have developed we have been fortunate enough to be able to handle the hamster pups from the very early stages. So to show the detail of the baby hamster, which was partly what the photo journal was all about; the day 3 pictures included some pictures of us handling some of the young hamster babies.
It quickly became apparent the strength of feeling that some people can have about pictures like these. We can understand some of the logic and reasoning behind this belief but cannot agree with the view that pictures of 
baby hamsters before the eyes open or being handled should not be shown at all. Surely that is a form of censorship and to not show pictures of young baby hamsters does not mean that they do not exist and it is naïve to think otherwise. The pictures are interesting and educational and with adequate warnings regarding hamster breeding and the small risk of cannibalism in dwarf hamsters, we believe that it is perfectly legitimate and justifiable to display these pictures of baby hamsters. We are also not aware of any evidence that displaying baby hamster pictures encourages people to breed hamsters or that in dwarf hamsters after the first litter that handling the hamsters encourages cannibalism. This experience is also echoed by other experienced dwarf hamsters breeders.
We believe that animal welfare is always uppermost in our thoughts, feelings and actions and with the amount of animal neglect and cruelty that exists in the world we sometimes wonder why people with the time and energy to go on crusades against perceived wrongs in the animal world don’t direct it towards the places and people where it would do more good.
John
