The folks over in France are so naughty!

First they invent kissing, then they perfect the affair and now they’ve taken a simple hotel stay and revved it up to new — and absurdly kinky — levels with the debut of the world’s first hamster hotel.

Yes, a hamster hotel.

Le Villa Hamster!

Before we go any further, let’s agree there will be no Richard Gere jokes!

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the new hotel is in the western French city of Nantes, a beautiful town smack in the Loire valley.

The premise of the hotel is that you can spend a weekend leaving your human self behind — and living like a rodent.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The hotel is actually a former private home dating back to the 1700s which has been transformed by owner — and rodent lifestyle-lover — Yan Falquerho into a rental property.

During its transformation, Falquero did the whole thing up like some over-sized hamster cage, including containers of organic grain, a water tube which guests can sip, and a double bed accessible only by a step ladder and a quick scramble on all fours. The pièce de résistance is a 2m-wide metal wheel in which both residents, if they wish, can take a turn side-by-side.

Hot!

There’s also an in-house kitchen, shower and very soon, WiFi — perfect for an unusual Internet hook-up.

But why a hamster-house?

Project interior designer Frédéric Tabary says he wanted to create a space for “people to chill out and smile in a society which is nowadays completely paralysed and formatted”.

Whatever their intention, the hotel has been booked almost solid since opening two weeks ago — so much so that Falquero intends to raise rates from €99 this year to €150 for 2010. Moreover, he’s already considering expanding with additional hamster properties in Paris and London.

He’s even speaking of his next unusual hotel concept — which he cryptically says will take guests “back to their origins….we mean their mother’s womb,” he explains. “There will be lots of light and sound to make you feel as though you are in a uterus.”

We can hardly wait.

For a real-time look at the La Villa Hamster, we present: