As I watch this cute little critter, I start to wonder. A curious naturalist rarely has to look far for interesting questions. How did this rodent come to be a popular pet? Why does Diggy run around the wheel like that? What are her wild ancestors like, and how are they faring?
There are 18 species of wild hamsters maybe more, depending on the taxonomist you ask. All species are nocturnal, hoard food and live in burrows. Some live relatively solitary lives and some are social. They all look pretty cute, but many are actually quite aggressive and ill-suited as pets.
The hamster that got the pet craze going, the Syrian hamster, is actually one of the rarest. The Syrian hamster had been collected by explorers a couple of times, but remained a poorly understood animal. It was known as a rodent with soft, golden fur. In , biologist Israel Aharoni decided to launch an expedition near the ancient city of Aleppo to find this almost-mythical creature. Aharoni is an interesting figure in his own right.
By most accounts, Aharoni did not enjoy travel or adventure. Anyone who has spent much time on research trips knows there can occasionally be someone who constantly complains about the food and lodging, sulks every morning and fights with fellow travelers.
Aharoni was that guy. And he was leading a difficult trip to find a creature that may or may not still exist in the wild. It does not sound like a roaring good time. Aided by a local hunter, the expedition finally located a litter of wild Syrian hamsters. This began a series of trials and tribulations for the newly captured hamsters.
It is somewhat amazing they ever became popular pets. Soon after the hamsters were contained, the mother hamster started eating her young — a preview of a habit that would horrify generations of hamster owners. Some hamsters escaped. Some died. But enough of that litter survived to found a breeding colony for research.
Those animals bred so well, in fact, that they became the founders of a pet industry. Wild Syrian hamsters remain exceedingly rare and elusive. According to Dunn, only three scientific expeditions have observed this species in the wild, the last in Because all hamsters collected on that trip were from the same litter, this means that pet hamsters show signs of inbreeding, including heart conditions.
But their greatest research impact has been in the context of medicine. Because hamsters are inbred, they suffer congenital heart disorders dilated cardiomyopathy in particular. Heart disease is nearly as common in domestic hamsters as it is in humans. It is this particular form of dying that has made them useful animal models for our own heart disease. Perhaps more so than any other species, they die like we die and for that reason they are likely to continue to be used in labs to help us understand ourselves.
Understanding the hamsters, on the other hand, has proven more difficult. The wild populations of hamsters remain relatively unstudied. Aharoni published a paper on what he saw in —the depth of the burrow, the local conditions, what the hamsters were seen eating.
Observations of Syrian hamsters in the wild have been rare: one expedition in , one in , another in , but little progress has been made. Wild Syrian hamsters have never been found outside of agricultural fields. And even in the fields, they are not common. They are found only in one small part of Syria and nowhere else. Where is or was their wilderness?
Maybe there is a faraway place where they run among the tall grasses like the antelope on the plains, but maybe not. Or maybe the wheat itself displaced the habitat the hamsters once used.
All it would take would be for someone, you perhaps, to go to Syria and look; in other words, to stage a new expedition for Mr. Maybe this is how he had intended to live on all along, immortal everywhere that a hamster lives in a cage. When they squeak and run, they do so in his image.
Upon discovering Mr. The earliest known description of the Golden Hamsters, as it was then called, was published in yes honestly that long ago in "The Natural History of Aleppo by Alexander Russell", with additional notes by his younger brother Patrick.
I think that it is perhaps important to know a little about Alexander. He was a physician practising in the Aleppo area of Syria from about , where it appears that he became one of the leading experts on the plague that was sweeping the area at the time.
During these ten years he kept very detailed records of the fauna, flora, climate and culture of the region. In fact he appears to have taken notes on every detail of the area and the people that lived there, and published the first edition of the natural History of Aleppo in Patrick Russell lived in Aleppo from and published the second edition after the death of Alexander.
I am not sure exactly how or when Alexander died. The Hamster was not mentioned in the first edition , but it is in the second, so perhaps Patrick discovered the species, but nothing is certain; it may also have been contained in unpublished papers of Alexander and not discovered until after his death when Patrick decided to revamp the text.
The passage on the hamster from this book reads " The Hamster is less common than the Field Mouse. I once found upon dissecting one of them, the pouch on each side stuffed with young French beans, arranged lengthways so exactly and close to each other, that it appeared strange by what mechanism it had been effected; for the membrane which forms the pouch, though muscular, is thin and the most expert fingers could not have packed the beans in more regular order.
When they were laid loosely on the table, they formed a heap three times the bulk of the animals body To me the most surprising thing is that Russell whichever did not claim to have discovered a new species, but appears to have mistakenly accepted that the Syrian was the same species as the Common European Hamster. Therefore the species wasn't named either by, or after Russell. Instead, the Syrian or Golden Hamster was named by George Robert Waterhouse, who presented it as a new species in He presented the "new" species at a meeting of the Society on the 9th April This presentation was based on a single rather elderly female specimen received from Aleppo, Syria.
His description was published in the Society's proceedings of thus: " This species is less than the Common Hamster Cricetus vulgaris. The fur is moderately long and very soft and has a silk-like gloss; the deep yellow colouring extends over the upper parts and the sides of the head and body and also over the outer parts of the limbs; on the back the hairs are brownish at the tips, hence this part of the fur assumes a deeper hue than on the sides of the body; the sides of the throat and upper parts of the body are white, but faintly tinted with yellow; on the back and sides of the body, all hairs are of a deep grey or lead colour at the base.
The feet and tail are white. The ears are of moderate size, furnished externally with whitish hairs. The moustaches consist of black and white hairs intermixed The collector and donor of the specimen was either unknown or at the very least unacknowledged, but following the description, this hamster, remember an elderly female and perhaps not in good health when captured, became the "type" specimen for the new species Cricetus auratus; Waterhouse the genus name Mesocricetus was a later modification.
I found this old lady, she is still at the Natural History Museum in London. I love that the third paragraph says Dwarf Hamsters are prized for their ability to ride horses.
I loled. Although I already knew my ancestors came from Syria, I didn't know my Dwarf cousins could ride horses! Enjoyed the page. Thank you! Limited availability due to high demand. Please see our Stock Availability page for more information. Are Hamsters Nocturnal?
Should I Get A Hamster?
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