This is my pet hamster, Karen, who is about to enter the wild. The only catch? She's lived her entire life in a pet store, so I'll be putting her survival skills to the test.
Will she be able to live a normal life? Well, she turned out to be anything but normal by the end of this video. I promise you will never see hamsters the same way again.
Starting with Karen. Come on, we have to get her. So I bought everything the pet store recommended, and apparently this is the ideal hamster setup.
All I have to do now is add in the bedding, food, water, and tiny purple house. But I have much bigger plans in mind. Now.
Karen here is a Russian hamster. I've never been to Russia before, but I don't think it looks like this. At all.
Come here, little one. Ouch. I definitely cannot show that on YouTube.
Tube, so I thought it would be best to give her some alone time. She spent the entire night trying to escape. Now she's chewing on the bars.
A terrible sign of stress. I was told this is the ideal hamster setup. Not anymore.
I got a brand new tank, replaced her bedding with real soil, replaced her plastic house with a real log, and replaced her fake plant with some real ones. Since Karen is completely untamed, I thought the perfect home would be her natural habitat. But as much as I want to, I can't just drop her in here.
She's been raised her whole life in a pet store, on artificial food, in an artificial home. Will she know how to dig? How to forage, how to hunt?
I don't know, but we're about to find out. Well, to ease her into this new home, I built a four part obstacle course to test her survival skills. And her first obstacle will test her ability to dig.
If she can tunnel from the top tube down to the bottom, then I'm confident she can burrow like her ancestors. Now, her next challenge will test her ability to forge. She's eating processed food all her life, so I want to know if she can find and crack open seeds.
And if she can do this, then I hope she can pass the next challenge. Her only task is to press a button to turn on a light. The catch is the button is buried under a pile of dirt.
Will she be able to find it? Well, I hope so, because her final challenge is the most controversial so far. It will test her ability to hunt.
So if she can find and kill a cockroach, then I'm confident she can not only survive but thrive in her new home. Now we just have to let her in. And as she enters the first challenge, she takes in all the new smells.
Her instincts tell her to dig. This is crazy because she's only ever dug in paper before. I can't imagine what she'll create in her new home.
Oh, there she goes. She's nearly there. But digging is a messy job, so she takes regular breaks to clean herself.
Every last piece of dirt must be removed. All clean and ready to go. Come on.
Maybe two inches away. I may have underestimated her. And she's already off to the next challenge.
The maze. She can clearly smell something, but is not sure if it is food. But after taking a closer look, she takes the whole thing with her.
Well, she's not eating them like I hoped. Instead, she picks apart the seeds and stuffs them in her cheek for later. Oh, now she's going back for more.
And apparently she's not full. Into the sunflower bin she goes. Her mouth is like a mini vacuum.
And in under a minute all the seeds were gone. Now she left. Made her way all the way back to the beginning.
Where she went underground. Her storage chamber. Where she turns her cheeks inside out to empty her mouth.
That pink skin is her cheek pouch that is full of seeds. This is rarely ever seen. Good news.
We'll never have to see that again. Now time to head back where she will face the next obstacle. This one is a little more complicated.
She jumps onto the top. And remember, there is a hidden red button that she must find. The button smells like her favorite food.
But can she dig it up? Oh, she smells it. Come on.
So close. There it is. Just press it.
Not hard enough. Just a little more. Bingo!
And now, on to the final obstacle. The most controversial of them all. She must learn to hunt.
One cockroach and one hamster. But who would make the first move? She begins to close in until they stand face to face.
What the. And she went straight for the head. Imagine what she's going to do in her new home.
Well, now, with a full stomach, she begins to make her way there. Her life is about to change forever. And as she makes her way through, she pauses.
She's never seen a plant before. These are her first steps into a very unfamiliar world. She now has the chance to make it her own.
But then, as fast as she entered, she left and ran all the way back through the maze. Through the tube, through the dirt, back to the beginning, just to run on her wheel. Will she prefer an artificial life or a real one?
I'll give her seven days. Seven days to decide. But over the first two she did nothing but pace around her cage.
So I placed in lichen, pine cones and leaves to further resemble her natural habitat. But it wouldn't be the wild without worms. Oh, she can smell them.
They have to make their way underground before she gets here. They race for safety and she races for a meal. But she might be too late.
Or maybe not, because she can dig faster than the worm. And then uses her teeth to do the rest. I get the feeling that hamsters should not be a household pet.
While she's already here, I sprinkle in some seeds and from there I left her for three whole days. And when I returned, she was not in the cage. In the maze or the ecosystem?
Or so I thought. She built a sanctuary underground. Was she finally at home?
Well, every night she would leave her burrow because she was on a mission. She would run from the ecosystem all the way back to her cage to run on her wheel. While I believe so much we're told about hamsters is wrong.
There is one thing we got right. Check out this video for more and I'll see you in the next one.
