SPEAKING OF IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

This report comes just in time to prevent needless tragedy during the holidays.

(Thanks to Jimpy)

Comments

[Dr Acula]

Give them counselling. And disability benefit. No discrimination against depressed hamsters!

[Sean]

The Buckeye State: Proudly leading technology into the 21st century..

[Wingfoot]

...in other science news, scientists discovered that mice that live in houses with cats have a higher mortality rate than those that don't.

[MOTW]

Another point for NSA funding pointless research.

[southerngirl]

What a depressing story.

[Stupendous Man]

I have an excellent recipe for Pressed Hamster. All you need is one hamster and one semi truck...No, wait. That's depressed hamsters they're talking about. Never mind.

[MOTW]

StupMan - Just a minute, don't give up yet. Your recipe will still work. After pressing the hampster with the semi, simply insert a tire pump into the mouth of the hampster and inflate to desired psi. That's a depressed hampster.
*pun intended*

[Stupendous Man]

MOTW, do you think that'll work with pressed duck?

[ceeg22]

great, and I was counting on my hamster to cheer me up!

[Sean]

They must have forgot to factor in the variable beer quotient sliding scale and chip constant...Fundamental in any reseach done at Ohio State ...

[kibby F5™]

WAIT!

....aren't hamsters nocturnal animals? And on top of that they're Siberian hamsters! I don't recall there being much daylight during the winter up there!

I think they've got their measuring techniques bass ackwards!

[WriterDude]

Now that this information has gone public, I predict that within one month Glaxo-Smith-Wellcome will introduce "Wellbutrin Rodenta".

[NiftyWitch]

SAD Hamsters WBAGNFARB!

[Brainy Jello]

Guess I need to get a different emotional support animal.

[Artchick]

Bravo, Wingfoot!
This is why I give all my pets crushed prozac in with their kibble.

[slyeyes]

Duh! They are depressed from running on that wheel that gets then no where.

[Mr. Completely]

Needless to say, The Depressed Hamsters WBAGNFARB...

...but this explains why my hamster, Bruno, just lies in his cage with his eyes open. Doesn't move, doesn't blink, hasn't eaten in weeks. I poked him with a stick and he didn't even twitch. Smells kinda funny too. Maybe I'll pry his little mouth open and shove some Prozac in there, see if that works. Oh, and I must move the snake cage away from Bruno's cage; the snake keeps staring at him. Gonna scare that hamster to death one of these days. Then what'll I do for company, love, and understanding? Everyone knows snakes are no good for that.

[Annie Where-but-here]

I'm with Kibby F5 (not literally) - they're judging the sanity of animals that like to run on wheels ad infinitum, crawl into human bodily cavities like they were Habitrails, and sing in horrific ads for Subway ("We love the suuuuubs! 'Cause they are gooooood to uuuuuus!!!") Even their Cousin Lemming wouldn't be that stupid.
And, in the wild, don't they usually hibernate? I've done my own research - my ex would always slow down right before he got ready to sleep all winter.

[Stupendous Man]

Mr C, I have a similar problem with my goldfish. I taught him how to rollover and play dead. Now he does it continuously. What's up with that?

[kibby F5™]

*slows down the wheel and jumps off*

Ok! Where's that dang test I'm supposed to take!?

[slyeyes]

Mr. C; that reminds me of a Far Side Cartoon. Guy is in Vet's office, holding a lidless shoe box. You see four legs sticking straight up. The guy says, "He won't eat."

[Stupendous Man]

slyeyes, you just made me *snork* up some of that papier mache tequila southerngirl's sister faxed me. Maybe it would be better with some papier mache salt and lime.

[bangladeshi_gurl]

If i were born in Siberia, I'd b depressed 2

[Federal Duck]

Bangi Grrrl!!!

Where you been, sweetness?

[TCK]

I don't think it has anything to do with daylight hours- it's gotta be that wheel - imagine running and running and running, and every time you stop to see how far you've got, you're still in the same place you started - you haven't gotten anywhere - how depressing is that? It's the very same reason I don't use either the treadmill or the stationary exercise bike my wife bought and placed strategically between me and the TV. What's the point of all that exercise if you don't get anywhere? It has nothing to do with me being lazy, like the wife says - if I was just lazy, would I have gone to all the trouble to move the treadmill and the bike from between me and the TV? I think not!

[bangladeshi_gurl]

Fed!!!!!!!!!!!((hugs))
bz being educated...

I have this mental picture of little hamsters with crowns of thorns on their heads...wandering over barren heaths...

[MzVette]

As a person who has owned many a hamster.. I can defiantly relate to the wheel thing. Had one hamster who would run forever, get out look around, realized he was still in his cage, than start running again. The same hamster would put a bunch of food in his wheel and look confused when he got hit in the head by flying debre. They are not bright animals..

[insomniac]

A Day in the Life of Ivan Hamsterovich

I awoke to the giant leering face of the cat, wanting to eat me. Then I buried myself in cedar chips trying to remember Siberia. Then I remembered it was roughly a hundred generations since anyone in my family had been there. After I drank the tepid swill my bourgeois capitalist owners call 'water' ,the young human wanted to play with me.
After I allowed myself to be pawed by it, I went back to my cage, bruised and ashamed. Then after its urgings for me to 'run on my wheel' I did, but backwards, as a mark of my contempt for its whole species. I would hope they would get me a mate, but as Jean-Paul Sartre 's play 'No Exit' points out "Hell is other hamsters."

[Eleanor]

Did someone pay them money to do this study? (I couldn't get all the way through the article.)
Because if there's $$$$ out there for this sort of thing, I have lots of gophers digging up my backyard and for the right amount of money I'd be more than happy to study them!!!

MzVette - ROFL on the "food in the wheel" thing - too funny!

[Tamara Rhymes With Camera]

1) 100,000 points to Insom!

2) Happy belated birthday, Bangi!

[MOTW]

brilliant, insomniac. Bravo!

[MzVette]

Eleanor, Yea that hamster was full of laughs! Well at least until another pet made an unfriendly gesture towards him... he would also run head first into the walls while in his ball. Which probably explains the whole wheel thing...

[Jillywilly]

Yay, insom! So my hamsters weren't really dim-witted, but were just buckling under the weight of their existential angst. Who knew?

[Mr. Completely]

Existential Hamsters WBAGNFARB.

[southerngirl]

SMan ~ salt & lime, coming up!

[hermespal]

Gophers have already been studied. Estimates indicate that a good field of gophers can move about 38 tons of soil per acre per year. In other words, a standard population of motivated gophers could theoretically move all of Utah into Colorado within a century.

Just thought you'd like to know.

[PirateBoy]

Earwig Alert: Amsterdam by ColdPlay
Original lyrics to this song
Note: This is obscure, even for me!

Oil this. But the squeek is fading
And I jump, scared by my rage

If I'd only have waited,
I'd not be stuck in this cage

Oil this. But the squeek is fading
And I swerve out of my wheel

And I swear this squeek is killing me,
Do they know just how I feel?

But the best is on your side,
Depressed is on my side now.

No more picking me up, then setting me down,
Open my door, put me on the ground.

Oil this. But the squeek is fading,
And I see no chance of release
I know there's no food on the surface
But I'm scratching underneath

And the best is your side
Depressed is on my side now.
No more picking me up, then setting me down,
Open my cage door, put me on the ground.

Stuck in my cage with food bowl and wheel,
Do you remember I know how to feel?
Stuck in my cage, listened to the news
Sick of you humans, afraid of my muse.

You can say I look cute
But it won't change a thing
I'm sick of you brutes.

Stood on two feet
Looked cute in my cage
You came along,
I bit your finger with rage.

You came along,
I bit your finger with rage.

[Bumble]

From the Tim Jones song "Hamster"

"All you eat is seeds and nuts
and you never get to go to Pizza Hut.
Running on that little wheel for hours
and there's no place to take a shower.
Stuck in a cage without a toilet bowl
and you've got no hope of parole.
Cedar chips everywhere.
I don't wanna wake up to be a hamster..."

Is it any wonder they're depressed?

[Annie Where-but-here]

Come to think of it, I've been plunking away at this computer for years, and every time I look up, I'm still in the same place. Sigh.

[Wurm42]

Oh fer cryin' out loud...hamsters are NOCTURNAL...why should sunlight matter to them?

[Annie Where-but-here]

Wurm42 - kibby F5 pointed that out earlier...guess we've come full circle on our wheel, haven't we?

[Dux]

Hey Minsc, ya hear that? Boo might be depressed!
Bring on the prozac!

[william cormeny]

You think hamsters have problems? maybe it's because they are vertically challenged in the snow,and they freeze their buns off.
But reindeer have a far harder time during Christmas, for out of the 2 million reindeer who try out for the Sled,only 7 make it. It's worse than the Olympics or the SAT.You think you have problems,sit around the reindeer bar after they post the winners.

[U.O]

So ... hamsters are nocturnal (my granddaughter told me that) ... that means they're more active at night ... so ... during the long winter nights, they're more active ... so ... they're not depressed, they're tired!

[Jimpy]

Ohio State University is always at the cutting edge of science. Last year they had a study that shows if you give honey bees alcohol, they get drunk;If you give them more, they get drunker; and if you give them enough, they pass out.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041025123121.htm

You don't see Harvard or MIT doing this kind of research.

[just sayin']

(You don't see Harvard or MIT mentioned much around here either;)

[kibby F5™]

Sounds like the frat house justified it's annual beer bash by getting bees drunk and passing it off as research!

GREAT IDEA!

[MzVette]

Even though I don't know if anyone is looking at this thread any more... but a useful hamster wheel tip...

If it squeaks greese the spindal with vasaline.. its thick, so it stays, and if the hamster eats it, it won't kill him/her

[kibby F5™]

Good hamster wheel solution! Suppose they'll let me use vasaline on my wheel at work?

Or should I try to get Purchasing to get it?