Hampsters are apparently uncommonly resilient in real or virtual form.  For some inexplicable reason I was moved to look up the infamous Hampster Dance website last week to see if it was still there.  Not only has it survived ten years, it launched in February of 1999, but it has spawned as rodents are prone to do  into a second site, videos, CDs and its own Wikipedia page.  It is sufficiently annoying that it made PC World’s Top 25 Worst Websites.

Even though this model has been tried with other cartoon animal characters, they can’t compete with the hampster.  Some quick online research yields even more stories of bizarre hampster survival, including surviving an industrial shredder, the kind that tear up washing machines, and convincing a snake in Japan not to eat it. It must have been a convincing argument because it worked for at least two years.  Although if you watch the video until the end you’ll see that there’s a cat that seems to have a different opinion.  There have been no updates on this particular hampster, but they don’t have too much life expectancy so that one has probably gone to the big play wheel in the sky by now.

What is it about hampsters?  The cuteness factor or the debate over whether there’s a ‘p’ in the middle? Or is it that there are just so many of them that a few are bound to become famous?  You don’t see this much press about guinea pigs. The last time I heard them mentioned inthe news was when the Smithsonian’s cafe, Mitsitam, put them on the menu!