Hamsters are nocturnal animals. They sleep during the day and only move around at night. They are usually most active from 7 pm to 10 pm in the evening (some are most active from 12 am to 4 pm).
Therefore, you should let your hamsters taking good rest during the day, and only play with them during nighttime. Any change in the habits of nocturnal animals can easily lead to short life as well as misbehavior. That can be one of the reasons why your cute hamsters can bite you.
Other than this, there are still many other reasons for hamsters to bite you.
1. There is the Smell of Food on Your Hands
The hamsters have a very sensitive sense of smell, so if you have taken the food they love, they are very likely to smell it, thinking you are food and biting you.
Therefore, it is best not to leave the smell of grain and melon seeds on your hands. Hamsters will eat your finger by mistake if they are with a bad temper. They will bite you very hard!
Therefore, It is recommended to wash your hands before and after touching your hamster.
2. The Fighting Spirit of Hamster
Your hamsters were raised together in the pet shop, and they often fight with other hamsters. So, they have a grumpy temper and are vigilant and hostile towards other creatures. It is recommended that you get along with the hamsters according to the timetable to eliminate their hostility. You can follow the timetable that I will show you later in this post.
3. Not Get Familiar With You
The hamsters need time to build up the familiarity with you. If you just got your hamsters, you are a stranger to them. If you try to fiddle with them or grab them with your hands, this will make them feel insecure and they will bite you if you keep on fiddling them. It is still recommended that you allow some time for the hamsters to eliminate the hostility towards you.
4. Obscure Eyesight
The hamsters’ eyesight is not very good. They can mistake your fingers for food. When you touch them with your hand, if your fingers are not close together, they will probably bite your finger as they think your finger is food.
However, they generally won’t bite you too hard. It can be just a bite that similar to the ant bite. So when you put your hamsters in your hand, it is best to put your fingers together, but not too tight, as too tight will jam the hamsters’ feet. It is also best not to tease the hamsters with your fingers to reduce the risk of being bitten.
5. Hamsters have a Strong Sense of Territory
If you touch other hamsters and have the smell of other hamsters on your hands, then the little hamster will definitely unceremoniously expel unfamiliar hamsters(which in fact are your hands).
Therefore, it is rather common for you to be bitten by a hamster after you touching other hamsters. It is recommended to wash your hands after touching other hamsters before getting in contact with your own hamster.
6. Disturb Them While They Are Sleeping
You shouldn’t frighten the hamster especially try to soothe their heads while they are sleeping. Hamsters are unprepared when they are asleep. If you touch them all of a sudden, they will be frightened and will bite you.
I have such experience before. That was one time I patted my hamster on the head while it was sleeping, it was shocking to get awakened and bite my finger immediately and cause my finger to bleed. After this lesson, I won’t disturb it anymore everything it is sleeping.
7. Disturb Them in Extraordinary Times
Don’t touch the hamsters when they are very nervous, such as in a cage fight, or when they are mating, or when they are pregnant.
How Long Will Hamster Stop Biting Me?
When you just got your hamster, it will take some time for the hamster to get close to you. You need to raise them a little longer with some patients. It may take more than a week for the hamsters to get familiar with you and the environment.
My hamster was given by my friend. It has been raised for almost a year now, but I am still a little afraid of him, and he is also a little afraid of me, but we still get together right. If you just raised your hamster for few days, you better don’t try to fiddle with it too quickly, because it might bite you.
If you want to expedite the process of having the hamsters get close to you, you can try to feed them with different foods and see which one they like.
Then, try to put that food in your hand and let them smell, gradually they will come and eat the food in your hand naturally. I also do the same with my hamster. You can try to lure them to come by putting some food on your palm. If they eat that food, which means you have been successfully building rapport with them.
Don’t Hit Them!
Never try to hit your hamsters. If you hit them for few times, they will scare of you and will not bother you for a long time.
If you want to build up a good relationship with them, it’s best for you to feed your hamsters yourself, because this can create affection between you and the hamsters.
Cultivating relationships is important for the hamsters to get close to you. But don’t do it anxiously as it takes at least one week or more to cultivate the relationship. It is impossible to do well in a new environment and with a new owner. It’s hard for them to accept it all at once.
They need to slowly adapt to the new environments and new owners. After raising them for more than a week, you can try to feed them with your hand. If it doesn’t work, raise it longer. The patient is the key.
How Do You Get Your Hamsters To Stop Biting?
Hamsters are not little pets that love to bite. We, humans, are definitely a dangerous behemoth relative to them. When they are harmed by unkindness, they have only that insignificant symbolic resistance, which is biting with their little teeth.
Some people said you should punish your hamster by hitting or slapping them if they keep biting you. I think this is wrong as it hurts hamsters and it is inhumane. We can give punishment to them but the punishment should be gentle.
What you can do is you can let the hamster smell your fingers. If they bite, then gently push them away (be careful not to let them bite your finger until bleeding). Repeat a few times and they will feel bored and ignored to bite you. But you still have to put your fingers on their mouth to let them smell, do it whenever you have time, and sooner or later the hamsters will stop biting you.
For your information, the hamster only trusts his mother and siblings. For other similar kind or strangers, they will be more sensitive and nervous. They may even bite each other. So the first two weeks when the new owner takes the hamster home is the most important period. If you can’t get his trust at the beginning, it will be more difficult to get close to it in the future.
Timetable For Hamsters To Get Adapt
Here is a timetable for your hamster to get adapt to the new environment.
- Day 1: Let them get used to the new environment first, don’t disturb them at all.
- Day 2: You can feed them directly by hand, and talk to them softly. Let them be familiar with your voice and smell.
- Day 3 to Day 5: You can try to lift them directly with your hands.
- Day 6 to Day 14: You can take them out and put them on the table, and then gently stroke their back with your fingers.
- Day 14 Onwards: you can take them out and play with them.
Correct Ways of Fiddling With Hamsters
Once again, sleeping hamsters don’t like to be disturbed. So before you pick them up, make sure they are awake. If you want to get them out of the cage, it is best to open the den first so that they can see you. Then gently grab their whole body with their hands When holding them, be gentle and never be too harsh.
Never scratch their ears and feet, or grasp their bodies. Doing these will make them nervous and they will bite your hand.
For safety reasons. When you are still unfamiliar with the hamsters, you can wear thick gloves to prevent being bitten.
In addition. Young hamsters need a sense of security. So it is easy for them to get frightened. So don’t hold the young rat in your hand for too long. Wait for him to be older and then train slowly
The correct way of holding hamsters is to use a hand to grab their backs and put them in your other hand.
Is it Bad If a Hamster Bites You?
Some people are worried whether they will get the plague if they got bitten by hamsters. Well, you won’t get plague if bitten by a hamster. Because hamsters are not murine at all, instead, they are belong to the hamster family.
Although hamsters may also be infected with certain diseases, hamsters themselves love to be clean and have been raised more and more delicately by generations. If there are any bacteria, they tend to get sick and die before they are transmitted to humans. Therefore, the probability of getting plague is just impossible. Basically, if you are bitten by a hamster, you just need to disinfect it.
In addition, many people are having questions about whether they need to be vaccinated against rabies. They are afraid they will be infected with rabies if they are bitten by a hamster where the fatality rate of rabies is 100%.
You can decide whether to get a vaccine or not. If you are worried about rabies, treat the wound and inject rabies vaccine according to the regulations.
If necessary, you can inject passive rabies immunization preparations. If the wound is deep and the pollution is serious, anti-tetanus treatment and antibiotics should be used as appropriate to control other infections besides rabies virus. If the bite wound is red and swollen or has other uncomfortable symptoms, you should go to the hospital immediately.
Should I Worry If My Hamster Bites Me?
1. If it is not bleeding or swollen, you don’t have to worry about it, and you don’t need to deal with it, because there will be no harm if it is no wound.
2. After bitten by hamsters, you should immediately remove the stained blood, wash the wound with soapy water, rinse the wound with clean water, and apply iodine to prevent infection.
3. If the amount of blood bleed is a lot, forcefully squeeze the blood out of the bitten area, and then wash it repeatedly with soap and water, so that there will be no negative effects after the blood clots.
4. After you have done the second or third wound treatment, if the wound swells up the next day, you must go to the hospital to get the tetanus shot. This is because there is a virus infection. Getting a tetanus shot is to avoid infection. The hamster is not poisonous. But as long as it is a rodent, it carries germs.