We looked in Zebra's cage, but saw only Zebra. And she was acting like the crazy neighbor climbing up and down the cage walls. Not what you would expect from a new mom.

She came to greet us whenever we approached the cage. But no sign of babies. We could see that Zebra had used the cage bedding to create a tunnel with two entrances; something our other hamsters had not done.

Now looking at Baby's progress with her rearranging, she also was creating tunnels and had moved her babies out of the plastic hut, into the tunnel.

When we saw this behavior, we decided to lift up Zebra's cage and look through the transparent floor. Sure enough: Babies!

Zebra had done an excellent job of keeping her babies safe and hidden. On Day Four, we are still not sure how many pups Zebra has. We can hear them crying when Zebra is off climbing the walls. The image above shows an average-size woman's fingertip and the pups through the transparent cage floor. The entry to Zebra's under-bedding nest is barely visible beneath the green spiral track in the image at right.

	Now that Baby's pups were three days old, Baby felt they were old enough to move to a safer site. And that's just what she did. At left, you can see Baby's back as she enters her nest, shltering her pups from our view.
Both plastic huts were tried and abandoned. Baby dug a hole and set her pups inside. On Day Four, we could see that some babies had been moved back into the green igloo hut and others back to there underwheel habitat. The pups are more active and we are starting to see their skin darken. Read more.