Habitrail is a brand name for a hamster cage made by the

Hagen Hagen () is a city in the States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, on the southeastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne and Volme meet the Ruhr (river), Ruhr. In 2023, the ...

corporation. It is a series of translucent plastic tubes and "houses" for use in home terrariums, designed specially for

hamster Hamsters are rodents (order Rodentia) belonging to the subfamily Cricetinae, which contains 19 species classified in seven genera. They have become established as popular small pets. The best-known species of hamster is the golden or Syrian ...

s. The design of the Habitrail is modular and can be configured however the owner likes, as well as disassembled for cleaning. The Habitrail is meant to mimic the

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

of the animal in question, usually a warren, or series of

tunnel A tunnel is an underground or undersea passageway. It is dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, or laid under water, and is usually completely enclosed except for the two portals common at each end, though there may be access and ve ...

s. The mascot for Habitrail is "Herbie the Hamster", who even has a video game based on him called ''Habitrail Hamster Ball'' produced by Data Design Interactive in 2005 and released for the

PS2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October, in Europe on 24 November, in Australia on 30 November, ...

, and the PC.

Reception

Habitrails are rather small. This tends to be a problem for

Syrian hamster The golden hamster or Syrian hamster (''Mesocricetus auratus'') is a rodent belonging to the hamster subfamily, Cricetinae. Their natural geographical range is in an arid region of northern Syria and southern Turkey. Their numbers have been d ...

s, who often get lodged in the tubes, particularly those that are pregnant. Conversely, Habitrails tend to be too large to work well for dwarf hamsters, such as the Roborovski and White Russian types, as they can not climb up the tube. In response, the Rolf C. Hagen Corp. introduced two new housings in 2007: the Habitrail OVO, which featured a larger modular design that also made it easier to observe hamsters and maintain their housing, and a similar cage with narrower tubes designed for dwarfs. The wheel(s) that come with the Habitrail OVO cage have three long holes that line the middle of the wheel where the hamster is to run; Habitrail has stated that the holes are to allow waste to drop through, but the legs of hamsters (especially the dwarfs) tend to fall into the holes. The high & smooth stairs leading to the feeding dish tend to be difficult for smaller hamsters to negotiate.

Popular usage

The word "habitrail" is also used in reference to enclosed pedestrian walkways, particularly those with few or no side branches, offering no personal choice of route, and those interconnecting unpleasant workplaces such as factories and office buildings. The Habitrail has become such a long-running institution that the name has almost become a generic word for any maze-like tubular structure: for example, " habitrail" is a common term for the raised wire-form ball guide in a pinball machine.

References

External links

* {{official, https://www.habitrail.com
Hagen ... for pets (homepage)
Buildings and structures used to confine animals Mazes Hamster equipment