A Hamster Faces Rigorous Criticism

There is a high degree of certitude that Chewbacca has abrogated virtually all notions of social consciousness, indulged himself in consistent patterns of what might be generously described as reflexively Social Darwinist behavior, and has demonstrated dangerously weak self-awareness, leading to untold potential damage to any larger group which had the misfortune or bad judgment to include him among their number.

While Chewbacca's demeanor would appear to be timid, fuzzy and endearing, hard data derived from countless man-hours of exhaustive observation by the team of visiting scholars and graduate students do not bear out this conclusion.

While the article has not yet been published, and the abstract is still in the editing stage, a simple application of data clustering to study his social interaction, where



and
the cluster of social contacts,



combined with substantive sociological and zoological analysis of the nature of the behaviors themselves (as observed in other animals, as well as among human patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder) reveals several inescapable conclusions regarding Chewbacca's behavior and presumably wanting inner-character:

1. Chewbacca avoids constructive communication.
2. Chewbacca does not model any noteworthy form of socially responsible behavior.
3. Chewbacca is motivated primarily by hunger and fear of being eaten.

The early hypothesis of Asperger's syndrome was not supported. For one thing, Asperger's has a strong association with high achievement. Even for a hamster, the slight numerical evidence of positive contributions by Chewbacca to society is not significant, and can be explained more convincingly as statistical noise. Peer studies at the University of Maine and Technische Universität Berlin are expected to confirm these results.

(A full statistical analysis may be requested at Chewbaccathehamsterstudy@umich.edu)