Running to a Phantom Exit

I was talking to my mother the other day when the subject of hamsters and gerbils came up. I think I was trying to make some sort of analogy to a hamster wheel that goes nowhere. From there I began to wonder if the little hamsters and gerbils that jump on these wheels and other apparatuses for "exercise" are actually making a futile attempt to escape their confinement. As a living being, they clearly have feelings, and perhaps a sense of awareness that there's a bigger world out there. They are directed to mate and replicate themselves, just as humans, so why wouldn't they be driven to seek a better quality of life? Though I doubt they are able to process why they are being driven to do so?

For years now I've seen the little guys on those wheels, seemingly running for dear life, and found the sight to be cute. But with this new realization, I can't help but feel a little sad to know that they could possibly be moving at such a feverish pace because they think an exit is imminent. Some sort of way out. They know not, however, that for them, there is no escape. The wheels, tunnels, and mazes that they endure are merely for our amusement.

I also wonder if they have any plan on what to do if they escape? I mean, where would they go, what would they do? Wouldn't they need to find the others? As they run toward that phantom exit, only we humans understand that they are actually safer in their confinement of bedding, a wheel, a pellet bowl or dispenser, and a source of water. Outside of that cage is a world of rats, mice, cats, car wheels, birds.....and worse, an even bigger space to live a life of solitude in.

Oh why do we enjoy confining creatures for our pleasure? And why must they run on a wheel to nowhere? Just questions that I'll probably never find the answer to. I watch a lot of the original Twilight Zone episodes, where the show's creator, Rod Serling, touches on different aspects of the human condition such as our wondering where we are....why we are here....what is 'here'?....what's in that big world out there? Could these little creatures possibly ponder such things as well. Mr. Serling attempted to answer these questions by presenting various scenarios in which man, the animal with dominion over all others on Earth, was in fact the captive for an even bigger species. In this series, we get to see what it would be like for humans to exist in a pretend world where nothing is real; where we are simply fed, manipulated, and monitored. And allowed to run feverishly toward phantom exits.