Depends on the situation imo
A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
71–80 of 106 posts
Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
#72If you look at any neuroscience paper, mice will run 10k a day or more on a wheel overnight. I thought the axis labels were wrong when I first saw that type of study. It’s quite common.
I knew mice were active at night, but I wouldn't have guessed 10k+ was routine
My hamster broke his record with 22k revolutions on his 10” wheel a few nights ago. That’s about 11.5 miles.
That’s much higher than usual, but when they want they can go.
Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
#73I love this. I feel like there’s a business and/or product line here if it doesn’t already exist (hamster habitats with integrated cameras).
It does! Sort of.
The company Niteangel sells a pedometer for their hamster wheels. It doesn’t provide times or speeds, but it does give you the number of revolutions per night.
I have thought it would be interesting to hook something up to be able to get the times and speeds. It never occurred to me that you could use something like Strava to record it.
Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only difference is the hamster doesn’t pretend the morning run was enjoyable
Many runners do enjoy running. Like every sport, it’s not for everyone. If you don’t enjoy running you don’t have to do it. I personally find the easy runs relaxing for the brain, and not taxing on the body, and the hard runs are quite fun.
Most sports have a habituation threshold you need to overcome so it becomes an enjoyable habit. Running is probably one the steepest imho.
Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
#75Neat! Not to toot my own horn too much, but I put together a similar project for my cat's exercise wheel. Hackaday featured it a while back: https://hackaday.com/2023/04/02/spy-on-your-cat-to-make-sure... His exercise routine is somewhat variable but he usually goes for a short jog a few dozen times a day. Most often at 5 am, for whatever reason. Since the article I also built and hooked up a treat dispenser for extr…
In the Vietnamese zodiac, the time from 5 AM to 7 AM is the Cat hour (it's rabbit in Chinese)
As a former rabbit owner I can attest that around 5 am was when the theater would open, and the first thing on was always this improvised bit called “abused animal trapped forever in a cage”. Lots of special effects too, there was gnawing and rattling and stomping. When I did open the cage door, she would jump out, take a look around and happily go back to napping right there in front of the cage.
Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
#76Neat! Not to toot my own horn too much, but I put together a similar project for my cat's exercise wheel. Hackaday featured it a while back: https://hackaday.com/2023/04/02/spy-on-your-cat-to-make-sure... His exercise routine is somewhat variable but he usually goes for a short jog a few dozen times a day. Most often at 5 am, for whatever reason. Since the article I also built and hooked up a treat dispenser for extr…
> Most often at 5 am, for whatever reason. It gives him time to run, shower, and drive to work
You forgot the mandatory meditation session!
Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many runners do enjoy running. Like every sport, it’s not for everyone. If you don’t enjoy running you don’t have to do it. I personally find the easy runs relaxing for the brain, and not taxing on the body, and the hard runs are quite fun.
Most sports have a habituation threshold you need to overcome so it becomes an enjoyable habit. Running is probably one the steepest imho.
Gym is the steepest. Three years in and I still hate it.
Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
#78Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's 10km, which is a lot more than 10k steps.
Not by much. A mile is 1000 paces, or 2000 steps [0]. 10000 steps is 5 miles, 10km is 6.2 miles. Walking on flat, paved surfaces, I do about 1850 steps per mile of distance[1]. I have a pretty long inseam, so I'm not surprised that I'd be under 1000 paces. Given that roads weren't paved with concrete or asphalt until relatively recently, I'm not surprised that the Roman mile is a little shorter than our current one[2…
So one step is a little over half a meter. That doesn't sound like a hampster's stride.
Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most often at 5 am, for whatever reason. Cats are crepuscular animals. They are "programed" do start at 5 AM, hunt, and go back to sleep until afternoon. Living in homes tweaked them a little, but the 5 AM thing is still strong in a lot of them (mine included). https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/resource/cat-keeping-you...
When I had cats, I couldn't leave the bedroom door wide open, because that would give them space to come running into the room and jump onto the bed (sometimes on my face) at early hours.
This is one of the great pleasures of cat ownership!