Thursday, January 21, 2010

Lizzie's Life (In Summary)

Tommy crunched together all the data we recorded over Lizzie's lifetime and came up with some interesting conclusions about her running activities. For example, here's a graph he made of her running schedule over the course of the day:



You can see from the graph why I spent so much time and energy trying out multiple types of wheels, lubricant and padding to find the perfect combination to muffle her wheel, because her favorite running hour was 2:00 in the morning!

He has a bunch more data and graphs on Lizzie's behavior up on his personal blog if you want to see more.

2 comments:

Teri said...

This is so cool. You did a lot of scientific observation. We are trying to figure out how to measure how much our hamsters are running. Any advice? Can we buy a hamster wheel pedometer somewhere? My young kids and I are not good at building things. Thank you!:) Teri:-)

Steph said...

Hi Teri! Tommy actually put together an Instructable on how to modify your own hamster's wheel. You can find the full list of instructions here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Track_How_Far_Your_Hamster_Runs/

But in case you want an easier project that will still be fun for you and your kids without the complicated construction, you can buy a regular bike speed and/or mileage meter from any bicycle shop and put that on your hamster wheel instead. Here's a video of one such simple setup that someone posted on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXRH50fvHWA

Hope that helps, and good luck!