Hamish the Hamster and Things He Can Teach You Quiz

Answer: Piebald

A piebald horse is black and white. Skewbalds are white and any other colour. A zebra is not a horse wearing pyjamas!

Answer: Middle East

Syria is a country in the Middle East. It has borders with Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon.

Answer: Omnivore

Hamsters are omnivores - they will eat everything (though they have favourites, just like us!). It won't do your hamster any harm if you feed him a little bit of what you eat - but don't do this all the time! Vegetarians don't eat meat and fructivores are fruit eaters only.

Answer: Imperial and metric

Metric uses measures like kilometres, centimetres and millimetres. Imperial uses things like inches, feet and miles. It can be useful to know both.

Answer: Rodent

There are over 2,000 species of rodents, making them the largest order of mammals (animals which give birth to live young). We belong to the order primate, and many people consider rats vermin (a small animal or insect that is destructive, annoying, or harmful to health). Well-kept pet rats are not vermin, being clean and intelligent.

Answer: Nocturnal

Nocturnal animals are mostly active in the night time. Diurnal means awake during the day. Some animals hibernate by going to sleep for the winter. Hamsters, if kept too cold, can enter a hibernation-like state.

Answer: No

Syrian Hamsters are solitary animals. If I got him another boy, they would fight. Male and female hamsters only get together to mate.

Answer: 5-10

Nine-banded armadillos, interestingly, always have four identical quadruplets of the same sex. If I wanted to breed from my hamster, I would either have to have between four and ten friends who wanted hamsters (and would look after them!) or buy a bigger house, because the female would need her own cage, and all the babies would need separate cages when they got mature too!

Answer: Agoraphobia

Many people have phobias and arachnophobia (fear of spiders) is one of the most common (I've got it!). Musophobia is fear of mice, which would be a funny thing in a hamster! Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13. Agoraphobia is the fear of open spaces, which is what Hamish had.

The big cage went (to become a home for my friend's rats) and I put another small cage next to Hamish and joined it with his home, so he's now got plenty of space to run around. See, phobias can be beaten!

Answer: Gaelic

Gaelic is the original language of Scotland and many beautiful names come from it, like Cameron or Sholto. Hamish can mean 'he who supplants' or 'he who removes'. It's a variant of the Hebrew name James. So now you know all about my hamster, Hamish. I hope you enjoyed the quiz and you have learned some new things. That's what Funtrivia is all about!