20 Scared Hamster Memes That Perfect the Art of Sudden Panic

The meme is a blurry, close-up photo of a brown and white hamster inside a cage. The hamster is standing on its hind legs against the wire wall, holding its paws up with its mouth wide open in a scream.

The image comes from a video posted on June 9, 2016, by Twitter user @m0vingdae. In the video, the hamster screams when the owner tries to refill its food bowl. The caption read: "This is a video of a hamster screaming at me because I'm trying to change his food." The video got over 173,000 views before the archive became unavailable.

In September 2018, the same user (then using the handle @dattebanyan) posted a high-contrast screenshot of that exact moment. They mentioned they took it while working at a Petsmart store because the hamster screamed every time they tried to feed it. The tweet gained over 425,000 likes in less than a week. The same day, it was shared on the /r/funny subreddit, which turned the screenshot into a standard reaction image across Reddit and Twitter for situations involving sudden stress or fear.