Shredding documents with a hamster, the difficult way

(Credit: Tom Ballhatchet)

As a former hamster owner, I can tell you that this concept for a hamster-powered paper shredder is really, really inefficient. Sure, it's not a mass-market product, but rather a design concept by artist Tom Ballhatchet that will be on display in Milan next week. The device works like this: the hamster runs on the wheel, which powers the shredder, which shreds the paper into hamster bedding. Clever, right?

Um, here's another idea. Just put the paper in the hamster's cage. Hamsters' teeth never stop growing, which is why they constantly need to chew on things. Consequently, the little guy will chew up all your incriminating documents and shred it for you without any need for a fancy contraption. Even better, get two or three hamsters and they'll turn all the evidence of your white-collar criminal activity into pieces so small you'll barely be able to pick them up. Dick Cheney, are you listening?

(Via Technabob)