This pet hamster is probably logging more kilometres on Strava than you

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LISTEN | Interview with physicist and hamster dad Thijs de Buck:

As It Happens6:01This pet hamster is probably logging more kilometres on Strava than you

Thijs de Buck is coming to terms with the fact his pet hamster is both a better and more popular runner than he is.

Mollie has become something of a star in the running world after de Buck, a Dutch physicist, rigged a system to track the critter’s movements on the running app Strava.

“I trained for a marathon for like half a year and gave a good effort, I thought. I got, like, maybe 40 ‘kudos,’ which is like the ‘likes’ on Strava. But Mollie’s getting about a thousand for each run each night,” de Buck told As It Happens guest host Rebecca Zandbergen. “It’s not fair.”

That’s not just because Mollie is a cutie-patootie with his jet-black fur, tiny pink nose and little hamster hands. He’s also an extremely impressive runner.

The little critter clocks an average of 10 kilometres every night in his hamster wheel, with a personal best of 11.15 kilometres, says de Buck.

“He’s beating me,” De Buck said. “Almost 70 kilometres a week, which I think many people doing marathon training would be happy to hit.”

Three vertical screenshots feature running stats accompanied by pictures of the same black hamster, with text that reads: "Wheelie fast for a hamster," "Maximum velocity. Minimum geographic progress," and "No rest for the whiskered." — Mollie’s stats are uploaded to Strava every morning. (Mollie/Strava)

Mollie, like most hamsters, runs all night, every night. So De Buck, who lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands, built a speed and distance tracker to measure his movements.

It uses a magnet to detect every time his hamster wheel makes a full rotation of roughly 65 centimetres.

“By adding a few more steps, like with a timer, etcetera, we also know how fast he’s going, which I can then all log and eventually push onto Strava, where he’s on his way to fame,” De Buck said.

He says the project combines two of his main interests: running and Mollie.

“I also enjoy to do quite a bit of running, and then I track all the possible data that I can,” he said. “It kind of bothered me that I didn’t know anything about what the hamster was doing, how many kilometres he puts in, how fast he’s going.”

A smiling blonde bearded man bends towards a hamster cage and points to black hamster in a wheel — Thijs de Buck says Mollie is a much better runner than he is. (Submitted by Thijs de Buck)

Mollie’s stats update automatically every morning after he’s finished his evening jaunts and settles in for a nap.

It’s all totally normal and healthy hamster behaviour. Wild hamsters, found primarily in Europe and Asia, spend their days sleeping and hiding, and their nights covering long distances as they forage for food and evade predators.

De Buck admits he didn’t know Mollie would become so popular when he created his tracking system. The rapid rodent has even been featured in the media outlet Runner’s World.

“Apparently people like running, people like pets [and] people like over-engineered things,” de Buck said.