Letters | It took Covid-19 for hamsters to be treated the same as their rodent cousins
- Rats and mice are detested as virus carriers and, along with their laboratory brethren, the guinea pig, are used in experiments and cosmetics testing
- Thanks to their cuteness and lack of a tail, hamsters have been treated differently
Unlike their Homo sapiens counterparts, who must quarantine once found to have caught Covid-19 or been exposed to someone who has, the hamsters were not offered such a sanctuary. Instead, they go straight to the morgue.
Hamsters, of course, have long been living a privileged existence largely because humans think they are cute and adorable. We keep them in cages and let them run to their heart’s content on exercise wheels, after which we enjoy watching them nibble on carrots.
But cuteness is actually a secondary hamster asset, at least from the human point of view. Their real distinction concerns something they lack, namely, a long tail, unlike their rodent cousins, rats and mice, which are generally held in ill regard.
Rats and mice are often associated with disease, either because of their long history of passing viruses to humans, or because humans deliberately inject viruses into them in laboratories.