Group Guide
Small Pets
Sold as starter pets, priced as impulse buys, and almost universally under-housed.
Nothing on this page is a beginner animal in the way pet shops imply. Small pets are cheap to buy and expensive to keep properly, they nearly all need company of their own kind, and the enclosures sold for them are usually a fraction of what they need. That's not a reason to avoid them — it's the thing to know before you start.
At a glance — all small pets
- Lifespan
- 1.5–20 years
- Adult weight
- 25 g – 8 kg
- Daily attention
- 1–3 hrs
- Alone time tolerated
- Most need company; adult hamsters must not
- Minimum housing
- Bigger than what's sold
- Diet
- Species-specific, unforgiving
- Handling
- Varies widely
- With children
- Supervised, always
- With other pets
- Prey animals — keep separate
The single most useful thing on this page: the minimum enclosure sizes here are larger than what most retailers sell as adequate.
Species · 8 listed
Every entry below is a species page with its own breeds, costs and honest warnings. The portraits are illustrations drawn to show each breed’s typical build, not photographs of individual animals.
Chinchilla
- 15+ year commitment
- Heat-sensitive
- Dusty bather
A two-decade rodent in a plush coat that cannot get wet, hot, or bored.
Ferret
- Carnivore
- Escape artist
- Vet bills mid-life
A carnivorous slinky with a war dance, and an endocrine system that needs watching from age three.
Gerbil
- Keep in pairs
- Deep bedding digger
- Low odour
A desert engineer that needs a deep box of earth more than it needs anything you can buy it.
Guinea Pig
- Never keep alone
- Vitamin C daily
- Vocal
Genuinely gentle, genuinely social, and never to be kept alone.
Hamster
- Strictly solitary
- Nocturnal
- Short commitment
The classic first pet, awake precisely when the child who wanted it is asleep.
Mouse
- Keep does together
- Watch more than handle
- Short lives
A complete small mammal in twenty-five grams, best enjoyed as a society of does.
Rabbit
- Keep in pairs
- Needs space
- Exotics vet
Not a starter pet. A decade-long, social, indoor animal that happens to be small.
Rat
- Keep in pairs+
- Genuinely bonds
- Short lives
The thinking person’s small pet: affectionate, trainable, and gone far too soon.
The pet-shop version versus the real one
- Almost every species here is social. One alone in a hutch is the default setup and it is the wrong one.
- Vet care for these animals is specialist and not cheap. Find the exotics vet before you need one at 9pm.
- "Good first pet for a child" is a sales line, not an animal welfare assessment. The adult is the keeper.
Availability, registration and keeping requirements differ from place to place. Check the rules where you live before you commit to any animal — we describe animals, not law.