How Much Food Can A Hamster Stuff In Its Cheeks?

You’ve probably seen your hamster stuffing food into its cheek pouch. If you’ve wondered how much they can put in those cheeks, here’s a BBC video with a Syrian hamster stuffing its pouch full of dried nuts and fruit. But it’s not just a random nom-noming video, at about 40 seconds into the video, you can see an X-ray of the hamster stuffing that food all the way to the side of his hips

It turns out a Syrian’s cheek pouches extends all the way to the hips and that’s how they’re able to pack so much away.

Here’s another video of one pouching way too many carrots:

Dwarf hamsters can do it but obviously due to their size difference, they won’t be able to get as much in. Here’s one of a Russian dwarf hoarding some sunflower seeds:

And this is not quite related but I feel obligated to include a video of Ichigo, my Roborovski hamster cracking open a lot of sunflower seeds he stored in his pouch.