Hamster with Full Cheeks

When hamsters find food, especially when it’s more than they can eat at once, they try to hoard it.  Instead of holding the food in its teeth like a squirrel and then hunting for a hiding place, a hamster will shove the food into its cheek pouches.  This way it can get enough for days of eating all at once. 

The hamster will carry the food back to its nest if it can get there. 

Here’s a video of my hamster Pookie with full cheeks.

Sometimes Pookie fills her cheeks too full.  I mean she puts too much in that she can’t even squeeze into the tubes in her cage.  Sometimes, with her cheeks still full, she tries to chew the tubes wider, thinking they are just holes in the soil instead of hard plastic. 

Eventually she will give up and empty her cheeks in a corner of the cage away from her nest.  Usually she’ll return to the corner to eat.  Sometimes she’ll take a smaller pile up to her nest.