We have had two hamsters and the thing we found out is that they have very strong personalities like people, so that the success of the venture depends massively on choosing an individual hamster that you can get on with.
Our first hamster was a lovely little lady, and was gentle and friendly. She could climb like spiderman and run miles if we hamster-proofed a room and let her loose. She used to shimmy up the back of the freezer and appear suddenly above our heads.
She was very ambitious and refused to stay in her cage when she was awake so we had a constant full time job supervising her on her missions around the house. She also liked to run up the gap between my legs which was quite surprising.
She was weirdly sociable. If we walked into a room where she was running free, she would appear from nowhere and run over to greet us, and then run off again to play. She was, in effect, a very tiny, hightly trained dog.
As you can probably predict, she unfortunately met her end in an accident, when our hamster-proofing failed. We were gutted.
Our second hamster was totally different. He was a big territorial male and he was not at all happy at all about being a pet. He didn't like to be handled and hated coming out of his cage. He smelt bad. He was more than double the size of the previous hamster. His testacles were so large that they have become and legend in our house.
One time I lifted him carefully and he bit me so hard that I needed a tetanus jab. After that we reached a mutual agreement that he would remain in his cage at all times, except during clean-out. I bought thick elbow-length gloves for those occassions. He was happy after that, and used to sit on his top shelf, looking like the lord of the manor. He would be there every evening, leaning on this elegant marble mantelpiece and regarding us, slightly disdainfully.
He did not come to a sticky end, but got an eye infection and was put to sleep.
We never got another hamster after that, because, quite frankly, we were knackered with the effort of living under all their rules.
They were very interesting though.
The hardest thing with hamsters, apart from living with them, is getting appropriate medical care when the are elderly. The vets expect them to be looked after like people, which is very expensive. Getting vets to put an elderly ill hamster to sleep is very very difficult, even if the hamster is very ill, and extremely difficult to care for because of being quite violent.
We always had loads of pets as children, but now I have no idea how my Mum did it. She must have had a much higher threshold for chaos than I do.