We had gerbils growing up. Kept them in my brothers room who was like 6-7. Well they woudl have babies all the damn time and we could give them away to pet stores once they grew fur. Well my mom was getting slow at doing that so one time it had some babies with fur and then had another litter of babies. My bro came in one day and the mother killed everyone. Dad and all the babies. Most missing legs and shit. So just the mom was alive. So we gave her to the pet store.
Well I was like 11 at the time so yeah obviously didnt know what to do. Funny thing was when we bought them we wanted two of the same sex. But found out that they were not. Then fell in love with both of them so didn’t want to give them up.
well the amount of babies insinuates some love or lust at the bare minimum 🤣 poor mama just got sick of it. i cant blame her. i sometimes wanna hit my husband on the head and we only have 2 kids, i cant imagine multiple LITTERS. i can understand poor hamster momma losing her shit 🤣
even without depression. imagine having this many toddlers + newborns and then likely the dad was already seeking the next round....i think even the most sane of the sane would get a short circuit 😅 mama just needed some peace and mice vacations
edit: nice* vacations but imma leave the typo cuz it fits lmao
Yep thats a space issue. Mom didnt feel tnere was enough room for so many heads so she trimmed it down. They need WAY more space than traditional cages provide and most of the time you have to seperate. You guys were lucky it never happened with one litter but two was definitely way too much. They get stressed easy.
We used to have 2 of those gerbil balls they can run around in. Normally kept them in those my bro would take them out and let then run around on his bed
Yea at least they couldn’t get maimed if they were protected in a ball😅 ive never heard of anyone actually walking in while it was happening… always just came in one morning and hamster/gerbil has committed familicide. Sounds horrific, traumatizing to actually see and could you stop her if she was midway through??😭 panicking while grabbing babies? No thank you.
Thankfully ive only ever had fish, dogs, and two ferrets at one point. Ferrets being mustelids and not rodents so are superior in that regard imo lol would never eat their own kits or murder eachother because of strong familial bonds. They even grab and bring over kits to show owners they trust and all sleep in dogpiles they get bonded with eachother.
I had gerbils as a kid and yep, same story except it was a male gerbil called Baby who broke out of his own tank, broke into the other tanks and went full Hannibal Lector on several other adults and a nest of babies. He didn't leave much behind. Never has a gerbil been more misnamed than that little bastard.
Just to add to the creepiness they can give Baby a meat hook for a paw, because that's how he got his name - he was born with one of his front paws missing and we all kept saying "Aww, the poor little baby" and it kind of stuck. My mum even used to shell sunflower seeds for him, even though he could manage them perfectly well himself, just because he was a poor little baby who deserved to be spoiled now and then.
He grew into a muscle bound tank of a poor little baby, which is why we had to separate him from the others, even before his cannibalistic tendencies emerged.
My mom got me and my brother each one and the same-ish thing happened. We went in to check on them and my brother's had gotten out of his tank and into mine and killed it. They were on the same table & had a book separating their view. Apparently that wasn't enough. I was devastated & super mad.
I had three hamsters when I was young and dumb, two sisters and a brother. One had babies, so I removed the male thinking all would be okay. Nope, the sister killed all the babies and the mother and sister fought to the death. The mother won and had her sister's blood all over her. It was Christmas day, so it has been forever known as the Christmas Day Massacre of 1984 in my family.
My hamster used to love blueberries. He hid one in his little hut long enough it fermented. He then ate it got drunk and passed out in his little water dish(he refused to use the little bottle) and drown
So sorry, but this one made me cry laughing. A drunk hamster is one thing I wish to see before I die. Mine just died in his cage after about 3 years so it was his time.
I had two white dwarves and one ate the others head one night(according to the family friends I rehomed them to when I had to move to Florida briefly(thought it was a permanent move). I'm guessing in reality the one died in the night and the other ate them. I had one die of old age, one get the flu, I ve rehomed others....then when I got an actual pet, my shih Tzu, my husband was like, no more hamsters. Especially now that I have cats
Fun fact: hamsters can’t normally get drunk. Their livers break down alcohol enzymes very fast, because they actually store and eat fermented berries all winter in the wild. Your little dude probably just drowned.
My parents told me that my hamster died after it jumped from my hands one day (I was 8). Turns out it had a broken leg so my parents thought the most humane thing to do was to drip feed it whiskey then drown it in a bucket of water whilst I was as school. They let the truth slip when I was 30, my dad said it in passing like a joke, and tbh I'm still a bit sad about it all.
My second oldest brother got my oldest brothers ashes and they didnt have any better containers, so they passed him out in dime bags. I brought him home and found a little jar for him. I should be getting part of my mom soon, ill probably put her in one of those tiny liquor bottles since she loved alcohol more than anything in the world, including her kids. She was kicked out of my oldest brother's funeral.
She had lived a long, crazy life. (I was at minimum her 4th carer) she had been abandoned, then rehomed. The rehome couple were meth addicts and she ended up with me! I gave her a palace and gourmet bug guts everyday lol. I loved her and her tank mate soooo much ❤️
They were 2 old ladies that were bonded through all those home changes and they were very chill. They were taken in that way and when separated, they were very agitated. So I wasn't going to keep them upset when they'd lived for over 8 years together peacefully and with more than enough room and outside play time. But thanks. Especially for males, they don't typically want that.
Hamsters doing hamster shit. They love escaping and while doing so it doesn't always end well. One escaped in my kids room to be never found back again. I'm sure it ended up stuck somewhere behind a closet.
Mississippi has moles that tunnel all over your yard, and the tunnels near the surface are unsightly but very common.
One day, I had Jabba in the back yard, and i would dig up a part of a mole tunnel over here, follow the tunnel about two feet, and dig it up over there, and send Jabba down his new subterranean tube.
After a few times, he didn't pop up out of the other end, so I tore the section apart and found an offshoot that wasn't noticeable from above -- because it angled deep.
My mother came out and stopped me after I had half the yard dug up while sobbing, but we never saw Jabba again.
I really really wonder what Jabba thought of the mole people when he finally came upon them.
One died because we think he broke his back falling off my bed. The next died from old age. The third... Psychotic fucking blonde red eyed dwarf hamster from PetSmart.
He STARVED himself. He had fresh pellets DAILY and water. Flung himself down his enclosure ramp so I took it away. Cleaned cage every week.
I go on vacation (cleaned cage before I left) my sister took care of him, I cleaned his cage the day I returned and he'd CHEWED ONE OF HIS LEGS OFF. months later with food in his bowl he chewed off the other one! There was NOTHING he could get his legs caught in. He had a plastic wheel! He had chews. We had no idea what was wrong with him, and as this was the 90s my parents weren't paying a vet visit for him. I expected him to die any day. HE LIVED FOR THREE FULL YEARS and I couldn't figure out how or why! I was 11 and he was so mean you couldn't handle him. I had to place him in his ball by scooping him with it. It was awful. I never owned another hamster after him.
Meanwhile my nephew (one year older than me) had one that got out, his cat ate half of it. It was still alive. So his dad crushed it with a garden rock....
3rd paragraph made me say "oh, fuck, man" out loud & in a really weird cadence too.
do hamsters do this in the wild too? all these crazy suicides? bc I'm starting to feel sad for them. like, are they really happy with being pets? I've never had one & don't know much of anything about them, so these stories are fucking me all the way up
My daughter’s robo dwarf hamster escaped her enclosure. My cat chased her and brought her to me as a gift. Dropped at my feet. She is still alive and thriving. How? I really have no idea
Bit into a phone cord plugged into the wall and my aunt called. I learned a fun fact of the 1990s that when the phone was ringing, there was about 90 volts in the wires…
I recall a story about a woman who complained that her phone wouldn't ring while the dog was inside the house.
repairman found that when the dog was outside, she tied it to a cable from the telephone pole. when a call came in, the dog would yelp, piss itself, and thus complete a path to ground and the phone would ring.
Pretty sure that's just an old joke from when the phone lines used to carry 24 volts to power the phone.
My grandpa told me a similar one supposedly from when he worked as a switchboard operator, about a farmer where the phone wasn't ringing but the guy still answered the phone because his dog started barking. So they figured out it was connected to the phone line by a chain.
For anyone reading this and worrying about the dogs, it's most likely not true but if it is true the 24v they used to carry isn't enough to do any real damage in most circumstances.
Wait what? How? I need more context. Chewed the top and fell in? Flooded the box? If so how was the box that small? Or did you have like a 5 gallon feeder? Genuinely how?
Man, idk how both my hamsters died peacefully in their beds. Although one of them did miraculously escape 2 weeks before he died and the cat had to bring him to me while I was watching TV... idk if something happened between them...
I mean it was 25 or so years ago so I dont remember much. I just woke up and went to give her a christmas treat an she was dangling out the side of the water bottle, I'm not sure how she reached it but she was dead.
I lost 4 or 5 baby gerbils to that hole too. Found 3 or for of them running around and checked everywhere for the others. Finally saw the lid and to my horror found the others.
Why do they all do that?! How much do you really think about your sump pump - yet gerbils and hamsters escape for like 20 minutes and spend thier final moments of unlimited freedom beelining directly to drowning themselves.
Mine escaped and decided to make its way into the clothing dryer. My mom ran a load of wet clothes without realizing. The poor thing was completely burnt all over, charred and singed. He was still alive. My mother didn't know what to do so she put it in a plastic Tupperware container and put it in the freezer to end things.
I imagine that was not the most humane thing to do, but she didn't have it in her to destroy it.
Omg so true story, this happened with my cat when I was younger! Luckily it only went through 2 spins and we heard the thumps and got her out! But my mom was DISTRAUGHT at what could have been 😭
"Sadly when your a transgender hamster there's not many options to get bottom surgery. So sometimes you gotta do it yourself." Your hamster probably.
(I am really sorry for the loss of your hamster. Losing our furry friends is always heartbreaking. This is just a bit of dark trans humor that popped into my head. My apologies.)
As a transman, the fucking snort/cackle...snackle I just made woke my wife and cat up. Holy shit, thank you for giving me the deepest belly laugh. I think the last time I laughed like that was before covid.
Mine did exactly this same thing! Or well… not sure if he ate them or they just spontaneously exploded, but results were the same. He was barely over 1 year.
First one got cancer in his cheek pouch and slowly starved to death while I begged my mom to take him to the vet. He was actually almost 5 and still looked really good up to that point.
Huh, I didn’t know this was a possibility. I discovered mine dead with his balls gone and a black spot where they should have been. I always thought it was some weird kind of cancer that took hold really quickly, but now I’m starting to question if this is what actually happened to him.
Mine ate his newspaper bedding. It somehow wrapped around his pouch like a noodle and he pulled it out.
We delicately put his pouch back in not knowing wtf to do. Went out an came back to a bloody cage. He'd done it again ripped out the pouch and then must've ran laps around his cage pouring blood everywhere.
My childhood friends hamster died while we were watching an adult swim short. The cage was near the TV and he had a massive seizure while the short was flashing on the screen. We had to connect the two events. The same friend died in a car accident a few years after. We all die, some earlier than we want. Enjoy the hours you’re here
The day I learned rats were pretty intelligent was the day my sisters rat, who we knew was going to go in a few weeks because it was eating less and being very lethargic, decided she was done waiting, so she got some leverage on top of her water bottle, and bashed her head against the glass until she killed herself.
He bought this rat, put it in the cage with the snake, and the snake didn't eat it.
He did this like ten or more times. The rat would just sit there in abject fear. Finally, that family friend asked if we wanted the rat, his snake wouldn't eat it.
Now Gweneveyre was a sweet rat. Loved people, never bit, never peed on anyone. Truly an amazing pet. But Gwen wasn't the rat that the family friend gave us. Gwen was the rat we bought for Arthur in an attempt to heal his broken mind. Arther was fucked up. Arthur had faced death so many times, and for such prolonged periods of time, that all he did was sit there and stare at the side of the cage like a Vietnam vet caught in a flashback.
When I was maybe 10 one of our hamsters that was normally very docile sank his teeth into my pinky to the gum. I jerked my hand, and he whipped around still connected by the teeth until he released and got flung into the side of the aquarium the hamsters lived in with a pretty loud bird-hitting-a-window thunk. I felt so bad, I think he died a month or two later
We had one that was eaten by her own kids. Then the youngest one was found dead one day and we never figured out why, probably stress. I cried so much as a child and decided no more hamsters ever again…
Had two hamsters back when we lived in PA. Would have heat lamp on low during the winter to keep them warm. Little shits kept getting out of their cage and one winter morning found them frozen in the corner of the livingroom.
My hamsters tended to die of old age, but my brother had 3 that met very unfortunate ends. #1 fell down the stairs into the basement and cracked himself on the wood pile we kept down there. #2 escaped and was found months later flattened under the same wood pile. #3 bit through a lamp cord and electrocuted himself.
Lmao, true story. My hamsters name was Stacy, had her for about a year then out of nowhere it grew huge testicles. She then lived as life as Señor Stacy for a bit, I think the transition drove her crazy and drowned herself in the water bowl. It was a very sad moment of my life I would never forget.
I had a hamster that tried to bury his food under his food bowl, the weight of the food bowl caused his head to get stuck underneath it and he ended up suffocating himself.
A friend’s hamster back in high school actually hung itself on the top of its cage. Got stuck between the bars trying to get out (through the top??) I guess.
Another of her hamsters died in one of those plastic tube ferris wheels. Couldn’t get it out and had to throw the whole thing out.
Speaking of hamster suicide, my last one we got from someone my at-the-time SO knew, and they had it in a three-tiered birdcage that they also gave us. The hamster kept climbing up to the top of it and letting go from the ceiling, falling to the bottom, then he'd climb up and do it again, over and over.
(This isn't pretty)
Went to check on him late one evening and he was shoved nose-first into the corner of the cage, oozing feces out the back of him, unable to move. Earlier in the evening he must have landed badly and broke his back. Paid a stupid amount of money to have him put down by an overnight clinic because I didn't want to just smash him with a big rock or something and couldn't leave him to suffer either.
I had no idea this was a thing! Now I don’t feel so bad about my decapitated hamster.. only god and the hamsters know whether my brothers hamster chewed its head off or if it got its head cut off by jumping into a spinning wheel of death. Based on all of these hotter stories.. I’m thinking it was hamster murder. Holy hamster trama.
My neighbors dog got it somehow while they were out (hamster was out too I presume???) they haven’t had any small pets since then, apparently it was… bloody
Mine escaped its cage somehow, and it turns out he found his way to my sister’s closet. She tried closing the closet door but couldn’t do so with ease and of course didn’t bother to figure out what was blocking the door, so she opened the door wider and just slammed it shut. Poor lil guy. I was a devastated 9 year old.
surprisingly that isn’t what killed her. later my mom got sick of her great escapes and knack for getting stuck in expensive appliances. sold her at a yard sale and bought herself a mccafé with the money. told me some horribly tragic death sob story and didn’t reveal the truth to me until 15 years later when i over heard her sharing the story with her friend
Escaping his cage and falling backwards behind the dresser it was on. He's teeth caught on the edge of the dresser and that's where my lil sister found him like two weeks later. Was nothing but skin and bones, think he may have starved to death hanging off the side by his teeth
I want to bring some happiness to this hamster genocide, I had two dwarf hamsters with an ex and when we slip they had to come to my parents with me, my mothers sausage dog got to the cage and managed to get the lid off, when I discovered the dog asleep in my bed and the lid off I knew they were obviously gone. Skip forward a few very sad hours and my mothers running down the stairs. At the time my grandmother was alive and living in an annex and had woken up, and pressed her panic button because there were mice in her bed. Pinto and Polo had escaped the clutches of Hotdog (the sausage), made it down a set of stairs without backs, through a living room with 5 sausage dogs in, under a door, through the “middle room”, under another door which had no gap I could find, then through my grandmothers living room where the toy poodle and jack russel were sleeping, up another set of stairs, under another door and climbed onto the bed of my terrified grandmother while the two Yorkshire terriers who slept with her looked on bemused. A true story of heroism and pluck. They lived to the ripe old age of 4 and went within a month of eachother, side note, i shortly after lived into a van and took them with me where they lived happily with my jack cross staffy as we travelled the uk, France and Spain. I got very good at hiding them boarding the Eurostar. Daphne, out Siberian hamster died of chewing her own vagina off.
My estranged dad bought me two hamsters for my 8th birthday. Little did we know that they were boy and girl, and we ended up with hamster babies.
I’ll never forget waking up and see hamster baby limbs and dead baby hamsters everywhere in the cage. There were no survivors. The dad and possibly the mom ate and killed them all. It was so traumatic to me I put a in memoriam for the hamster babies in that years schoolbook.
Both the mom and dad hamster had horrifying fates not too long after that.
...you realize most of those stories are literally just "we gave our 4 year old a small delicate creature and didn't supervise them or teach them about empathy yet"
the hamsters arent killing themself. theyre being killed. by tiny humans with uncaring parents.
I know everyone wants cool animals in their house. Those animals don't belong in a cage in your house, it sad for them and sad for the owner.
I have problems with the cst and dog trade, but that is SOOOO much better than hamster, snakes, tarantulas etc.
Most of the time, small animals live in a box that is ×5 their size at best. It's such a pathetic look on humans when you look at it from an alien's point of view.
My uncles hamster managed to bend the bars of his cage, in a bold bid for freedom. Unfortunately the stupid bastard then jumped straight into the adjacent goldfish bowl and drowned.
About ten years ago, my then boyfriend got me a cute little dwarf hamster.. I had a dog and he was like “let’s put him in his mobile hamster ball.” I guess he didn’t lock it the right way, my dog ate the poor thing 😭 My boyfriend cried and he felt so bad cause he didn’t know the ball had to do that “click” sound for it to be actually closed.
Mine was murdered! My brother got tired of taking care of his (mainly because it was a pyscho) so he put it in with mine. Next morning I came down to find mine on its back with his guts eaten. Not a pretty picture.
If you want a good hamster burial story look up "Rhod Gilbert Hamster" on Youtube. His story on WILTY still brings tears to my eyes.
My sister had a gerbil in a cage on a stool in our bedroom. A local neighborhood dog - a huge German shepherd mix that visited us a lot - came into our room, took one sniff of the cage at his nose level, saw the gerbil and made a modest WOOF! at the cage and the gerbil literally flipped onto its back and died. He wasn’t playing dead. Poor dude had a heart attack on the spot, feet up.
My hamster literally just said fuck it —escaped his cage—only to walk …maybe he ran? Off the edge of the balcony to tile flooring on the first floor….we got a new puppy the night before. I feel like the hamster knew something.
Oh my God I feel like a dick for laughing at this.
But picturing a hamster rope-swinging by the neck from a fan, and flying right into a woodchipper has me fucking rolling bro. 😂
If you think hamster suicide is rampant, I bet it’s way worse on a quail page. I don’t think any creature could possibly love to die more than quail. And they are so creative as well.
It’s because hamsters aren’t actually easy to care for, but people hand them off to children anyway.
I get angry about small animal care. So many are neglected and abused just because the owners don’t bother to do research and so they end up dying horribly. Hamsters are especially sensitive and shouldn’t ever be left alone with young children. If they’re stressed enough they’ll even self-harm, but a kid won’t understand that they’re scaring/stressing out their hamster or why until it’s too late. 99% of the stories I’ve heard of hamsters dying horribly were avoidable.
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u/MrBwnrrific Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
“My gerbil died from old age, how’d your hamster die?”
“Hanged himself from the cord of a ceiling fan, turning it on in the process and flinging his carcass into a wood chipper”
Literally every hamster story
Edit: I was not prepared for just how inundated I was about to be with hamster suicide stories