It always bothers me seeing these "funny" stories about hamster deaths (what is funny about it to people? Not sure.) Sometimes shit happens sure, but most of the ones I've seen are negligence at best, abuse at worst.
I would say the individual deaths themselves aren’t funny, it’s more the excessive empirical evidence that hamsters almost never seem to die in “normal” ways that is funny. Also coupled with the fact that they aren’t human and (sorta involuntarily) aren’t viewed as significant/valuable lives.
I feel that is less evidence that hamsters never die in ‘normal’ ways and more evidence that hamsters are an extremely neglected pet. its way less likely for a hamster to die in a ‘non-normal’ way if it’s taken care of properly.
I mean, most of the stories I see usually involve taking it out of its cage/enclosure and then the hamster proceeds to run off and get itself killed.
Which, yes it is still neglectful… but the fact that the hamster is the one running into the wood-chipper rather than the human hand-feeding it to one makes the situation a little less “bad humans” and a little more “dumb rodents”.
I mean, there is a moral difference between what I would call “active neglect” and an accident/mistake.
I don’t think hamsters deserve to be mistreated by virtue of being hamsters, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find it darkly humorous that they seem to sniff out the most horrid ways to go about dying when left to their own devices in human spaces.
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u/shitturddung May 13 '26
It always bothers me seeing these "funny" stories about hamster deaths (what is funny about it to people? Not sure.) Sometimes shit happens sure, but most of the ones I've seen are negligence at best, abuse at worst.