Tufts University offers Opencourseware like sample in this learn nod for a variety of scientific and other subjects. One of the courses, which you can click to is Rodent and Small Mammal Medicine. The webpage that a click will lead you to has valuable information on the diseases and treatment of the smallest animals we humans keep as pets. It also has this quotation from from David L. Graham, D.V.M. PhD.:
Now, ponder, please that thought of the Bard’s “what’s in a name?” Like, for example, “Pocket Pets”? In my humble opinion all veterinarians should abjure use of the term “pocket pets.”it is (at least to me and few colleagues) offensive and denigrating to the inherent uniqueness and dignity of those creatures that happen to be of such small size that they can fit into a pocket. The term suggests that such pets can be maintained in a more casual and less careful, less caring, and less thoughtful manner than is required for maintenance of other, more traditional companion animal species. Such creatures are of no lesser biological and moral consequence than are larger, more traditional pets. I’m sure that the cute alliteration of the term is a major reason for its acceptance, but I urge that some other rubric(s) be coined under which to group these relatively diminutive companion animals. Please, they are sugar gliders, gerbils, hedgehogs, mice (‘wee sleekit beasties’ – R. Burns), small pets, little small animals (to differentiate them from dogs and cats which are merely ’small animals’), minipets -but please-not “pocket pets.”
How to care for the type of smallest pets shown above guinea pigs is explained in detail at the ASPCA website. The ASPCA pages are an excellent place to study many pet subjects. The Humane Society has an article How to Care for Hamsters that contains some history and social facts too about these smallest pets. While guinea pigs are of South American origin and have been kept as pets for centuries, hamsters were “living in relative obscurity until just 70 years ago when a zoologist discovered a family of these rodents in the Syrian desert.” The ASPCA tells us guinea pigs want to live together; the hamster article said a hamster needs privacy “from others of his kind.” Respecting rodent social mores is important in their care.
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