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Hamster History
Hamster is a cute little rodent with tiny nose and black eyes. Often times resembled chipmunks and even a bear. Hamster is best described as a large mouse and a small guinea pig. When fully grown, the Golden Hamster is between five and six inches long and red-gold in color. Unlike their closest relatives such as the mice and rats, they have a tiny stub of tail.
In 1930, the zoologist, Professor I. Aharoni of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, found one mother and a litter of twelve baby hamsters in the Syrian Desert near the town of Aleppo. Syria is a country located at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea, to the north of Israel. When he brought the hamster family back to Jerusalem, all but three hamster survived. The remaining hamsters continued in excellent health and within four months the first litter of golden hamsters ever to be born in captivity was delivered.
Hamsters were first introduced in United States in 1938 as experimental laboratory animals, it was only until 1947 that they first became popular among pet fanciers.
When they matured, offsprings were interbred. The hamsters multiplied remained disease free and breeds rapidly as much as a litter in a month . They become ideal in research experiments and soon they began to attract widespread attention in the scientific world. Docile and easy to handle nature made them a much sought after laboratory animals.
The golden hamster’s scientific name is Mesocricetus auratus auratus or Cricetus auratus for short. It is also commonly known as the Syrian Golden Hamster to distinguish it from two other hamster species the European or Black Hamster, and the Chinese or Gray Hamster. The name hamster is derived from the German word hamstern which means “to hoard”. One of the hamster’s peculiar traits is to hoard food until it fills up the cheek pouches, then it scampers away to a safer. place
The European or Black Hamster (Cricetus cricetus) and the Chinese or Gray Hamster (Cricetus griseus) should not be confused with the Golden Hamster. Neither of them has been tamed for pets. The Chinese Hamster ranges from China to the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia. The European hamster ranges from the western coasts to a point roughly north of India. Where these two ranges overlap, the Syrian or Golden Hamster is found. Its range is much more limited than the Black and the Gray, and it appeared, apparently, much later in the Evolutionary History. It is the “middle-sized” hamster which is what Mesocricetus means compared to the European which is about nine inches long and the Chinese Hamster is gray above with a black stripe down the center of its back, and light below. The European hamster is light brown above, black below, and white at the sides. Both are sometimes used for food, and their skins for coat linings.
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 12:54 pmand is filed under Hamster Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.