David Jordan and James Cole, undergraduates at Cambridge University in the U.K., have been fined for posting a live hamster.

The pair put the hamster in a standard A5 envelope and posted it in Market Street, Cambridge, on 22 June.

Michael Taylor, prosecuting for the RSPCA, said: “The hamster had been posted in a sealed, addressed envelope which contained no food and no source of fluid.

“The postman who emptied the box made the discovery because it was trying to chew its way out of the envelope. A veterinary surgeon who examined the hamster said, had it ended up in the sorting office and its mechanical sorting drum, the creature could have been killed.” — Cambridge Evening News

Jordan was fined £750 and Cole £500, and both become today’s Stupid People of the Day.

(More information available from Daily Telegraph and from BBC: What can’t you send through the post?)