Nope. It can get a little pungent near cleaning day, but most of the week it just smells like hay and aspen shavings (i.e. not bad at all).Originally Posted by Anonymous d
Yeah, because domestic animals are well suited for wild living.
Absolutely. Small animals don't stink if you give them enough of the proper bedding and keep them clean.
Although I've often wondered about the domesticity of small animals. While my hamster is certainly more "tame" than a wild hamster...you couldn't just march out to Syria and expect a wild hamster to let you pick it up or eat a mealworm out of your hand...I'm not sure small animals can be truly domesticated. My hamster still lives in a burrow - it's just one I provided for him. He still caches food. If he gets startled by me or the cat, he still exhibits the same "freeze" behavior he would if he felt threatened in the wild.
While I don't think animals used to indoor living with humans should be turned out (and why would we want to) I'm not sure that small pets domesticate in the same way that we thinks cats and dogs do (a whole other debate in itself).
Well, to me, "domestication" doesn't mean "friendly and affectionate", it just means that the kinds of the animals that we keep as pets or livestock are no longer very similar to their wild ancestors, and may not have the skills or means to survive in the wild any more.
Domestic rabbits, for example, cannot survive if "turned loose". They aren't wild animals, and don't know how to hide, forage, find water, or generally take care of themselves. They're also morphologically different - usually they are much bigger or smaller than wild rabbits, and probably don't even have the instinct or constitution to construct homes for themselves.
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