A website about these things auto-played a 9 second wav file with a pitched-up sample from Disney's Robin Hood.  
In The Social Media Reader, Patrick Davison described a meme about these things as being "big like Mt. Rushmore" in contrast to emoticons, which were "big like McDonald's".  An Earthlink commercial starring some of these creatures ended with the tagline, "It's your internet, we just connect you to it."  A song named for these creatures was heavily sampled for the track "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" by the Cuban Boys.  In 2014, the Wall Street Journal ran a headline reading, "Photos of [These Creatures'] (*) Rear Ends Are Hit in Japan".  A website about these things auto-played a 9 second wav file with a pitched-up sample from Disney's Robin Hood.  Deidre LaCarte created a popular GeoCities page with gifs of four of these creatures.  Two of these creatures appear with 1 wheel in a popular meme.  For 10 points, name these rodents which danced in an early internet meme.
In The Social Media Reader, Patrick Davison described a meme about these things as being "big like Mt. Rushmore" in contrast to emoticons, which were "big like McDonald's".  
hamsters [or hampsters] 