A Solitary Pet

The conditions of the hamster's native land, a barren lanscape combined with a scarcity of food, were not conducive to sustaining large colonies of hamsters. The animals thus evolved into solitary creatures that fended for themselves. They typically came together only to mate, the female then taking on the responsibility of raising her young on her own. Assuming incorrectly that a single hamster is a lonely hamster, many owners ignore the natural solitary nature of these animals, and insist on housing them together, usually with dire, and quite violent, results.


Hamster personality is also often misunderstood. Although hamsters usually prefer the company of humans to that of their own kind, they are frequently labeled mean and ornery. In most instances, the hamster that lives up to those labels is simply a hamster that has been mistreated or was never socialized to human handling. The well-bred well-socialized hamster that is properly housed, entertained and cared for should be a gentle, sweet nature animal that comes to know and trust her owner and to enjoy the time they spend together. Indeed the bond that can form between a hamster and human can be surprisingly sound and touching.

The hamster, though the ideal pocket pet for the right owner, must not simply be locked in the cage and ignored. She is a solitary creature, but thrives on human care to help her adjust to life in captivity. Cleanliness, play, a healthy diet, a stress-free environment and regular human interaction are the ingredients vital to the health and well- being of this animal that boast a long and prestigious record of survival.

Look at your hamster in light of her existance as a wild creature and you will find the best of both worlds living within your home: a delightful, gentle, entertaining pet and a creature of the wilderness all wrapped up in a single, rather adoraable, package. What an honor to share your home with so distinctive a character.

Natural Burrowers

This is a lifestyle that took place primarily underground. A consummate burrower, the wild hamster spent a great deal of her time beneath the surface of the earth, hiding in the cool catacombs of tunnels, safe from the harsh rays of the sun, extreme temperatures, and the teeth and claws of rodent-hungry predators. She would emerge from her safe, cool sanctuary when the sun set to scavenge for her dinner.

Food was scarce in the hamster's native territory, a condition that subsequently served to mold the hamster into an animal that requires a great deal of exercise. In the wild, she was forced to travel vast distances to find sustenance. Joke as we might about hamsters running aimlessly on their exercise wheel - miles and miles in a single day - the hamster is driven by instinct to a life of activity.

Hamster owners need to understand that their pets will live longer and more contentedly if they are provided with appropriate and variegated opportunities to play and interact with people. This means making far more of an effort than simply supplying the animal with 24 hour access to an exercise wheel, to which the hamster can become addicted, not to mention exhausted and dehydrated.

Native Territory

In the golden hamster's ancient homeland, the day-time temperatures were generally warm, the night temperatures cool; food was intermittently scarce and abundant; and there was little vegetation and landscaping to safety conceal a tiny rodent from predators. Now envision a quite, gentle animal - the hamster - in the midst of such a scene, and evaluate how the characteristics of her native territory relate to the hamster's evolution.

From a physical perspective, here is a small rodent whose large expressive eyes offer the first clue to how animal would operate in the wild. A nocturnal creature requires large eyes to see effectively in the dark-ness. In the wild, she spends most of her waking hours under the cover of night, waiting until the atmosphere cools to seek her dinner. The hamster's prominent ears also have a story to tell. They are positioned high on the animal's head so the hamster might best take advantage of her acute sense of hearing, especially when faced with the challenge of detecting the presence of an approaching predator - or the voice of a trusted owner.

The ample cheek pouches are another survival function of the hamster. The hamster can stuff her pouches with almost half her body weight in food, which may the be hidden in private caches for another day when food is not so plentiful (a habit pet hamsters may practice in captivity, as well). This would certainly explain why this animal's name is derived from German word hamster, meaning "to hoard"

As far as hamster behavior is concerned, not much is known about the hamster's life in the wild, and apparently that is precisely how the hamster has intended it to be. The golden hamster remained unknown to public at large for so long (and her natural wild existence still remains somewhat of an enigma) because of her rather mysterious lifestyle.

Hamster Character

It is viewed as comedic when a hamster is cast as a mean and vicious villain in a child's horror story, or when, as occur in the immortal comic strip "Calvin & Hobbes", a precocious six year old pleads with his harried dad to read him his favorite book, one with a protagonist that just happens to be a hamster, for the umpteen hundredth time.

A hamster? What could be so interesting, so captivating about hamster? The very existence of such questions is precisely where the humor lies. Hamster enthusiasts know that there is plenty to be interested in and captivated by this humble, unassuming animal, and that her role as clever villain and fascinating children hero is not only pleasantly unexpected, but downright deserved. Get to know the hamster, and you will discover a quite fascinating creature that has mastered the super heroic habits of a small animal forced to survive in treacherous wild environs - an animal that is equally adept at adapting those characteristics to life in captivity.

As with all animals that leave come to occupy a domestic niche, the hamster's physical and behavioral characteristic have been molded through the ages by her native home, the desert. Understand the link between the hamster;s home territory and the appearance, behavior and character of the contemporary pet hamster within your home, and you will be better equipped to enjoy your pet. You will also be better equipped to enjoy your pet. You will also be better prepared to offer her the optimum care required to keep a hamster spry and healthy until the ripe old age of two or three.

Hamster - Friendly Times

The 1990s have proven to be an especially hamster-friendly decade s far as numbers go. As more and more people move to urban and suburban environments where pets may not be welcome , many individuals still hanker to live with animals. The hamster proves to be natural in meeting that need. Her small size, cleanliness and ease of care mean that she can thrive in a tiny, metropolitan studio apartment with a "no pets" policy just as easily as she can in a large, suburban multi-bedroom home that hosts a variety of pets. And according to veteran hamster caretakers, she fills the pet bill quite nicely. The hamster has been repeatedly named a popular household pet because she provides her own warm brand of companionship.

You don't hear much about hamsters in the media. They don't incite much controversy or inspire much heated debate. They don't fortunately for them, sport rich pelts of fur like those that have made their cousin the chinchilla so legendary. They haven't become public enemy number one by entering human homes without an invitation, like the mouse. Very few associations exist for the promotion and protection of these small creatures, and there are far fewer fictionalized hamster characters than there are, say, mice and rabbits, yet their numbers are solid. The quite popularity of the hamster as a resident in human household indicates that, within American homes, there are thousands of well-loved hamster living peacefully and quietly, converting one person, one family, at a time to the joy that is hamster keeping.

The Road To Domesticity

Once in the care of humans, hamster were first enlisted as laboratory animals, an unpleasant fate to be sure, but one that led to an increase in the under-standing of keeping the animals healthy in captivity. This information would later prove vital to the success of keeping hamster as pets.

Today, hamsters continue to be used as lab animals, although the numbers of hamsters used for this purpose have declined substantially in the last twenty years or so. The contemporary efforts to improve experimental procedures and to reduce the number of animals used for those purposes are known as the 3Rs: reduction, replacement and refinement.

From the sterile halls of the laboratory environment, the hamster's reputation as a quite, gentle animal (attributes that made her a desirable laboratory animal in first place) spread. Hardly a surprise to those who had come to know her, the hamster soon found herself being targeted for a far more positive fate: that of a family pet.

The hamster proved to be a natural at this calling, of course, and has remained and blossomed within that friendly niche ever since. This great popularity is significant, considering that the hamster was officially discovered and enlisted into a partnership with humans only a few decades ago. That the hamster has become such a common house-hold name as a pet species both in home and schoolrooms in such a relatively short period of time is testament to her charm and to her decidedly ideal pet characteristics.

A Revolutionary Discovery

The hamster has come a long way from existence as a golden short haired rodent in t the wild to a popular pet that may sport any variation of coat type or color and reside in domestic homes - many of those with children.

The hamster's story began in 1829 when she was discovered near the Syrian city of Aleppo by British zoologist George Waterhouse. He called this little rodent Cricetus auratus or golden hamster. She went on to enjoy a brief period of popularity as a pet, primarily in England . But despite their prolific breeding habits, the novelty of owning these small, unique, tailless rodents wore off and so did the existence of Hamsters in captivity.

Yet the hamster would not remain unknown forever. In 1930 a zoologist name Professor I. Aharoni, from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, found a female hamster and her litter of twelve while conducting research in the Syrian desert. He had intentionally sought these animals, inspired by historical accounts he had read that described quite, docile animals known as Syrian mice and thought to have been keept as pets by the ancient Assyrians. When the zoologist discovered the little hamster family huddled in an underground burrow in the desert, he assumed that these were the socalled mice about which he had read.

Most of the hamsters died when Professor Aharoni attempted to bring the mother and her young back to Jerusalem, so he was left with just two females and a male. It was believed for many year that the Syrian hamster was first discovered by Professor Aharoni but, in actuality, the Syrian hamster existed in the wild before and after the time we initially thought. It is true, however, that Syrian hamsters today have the professor's original three hamsters as their common ancestors.

While finding a family of rodents out in a desert would not a first seem to be earth-shattering, this particular discovery came as quite a surprise to those who knew rodents. Most of the few who had ever heard of the elusive hamster had assumed that the hamster species, given the animals' lack of visibility in the last one hundred years or so, was extinct, both in the wild and in captivity. But the hamster had remained unseen, not because of a decline in her population
(extinction is, for all practical purposes, a foreign concept to rodents), but because her secret, solitary nature and nocturnal habits had made it so. Now, however, the secret was out, and the hamster would never again live within the shelter of obscurity.

The newly discovered hamster family was subsequently transported to Jerusalem. But sadly, because so little was know about their care at the time, only three of them survived. A successful breeding program was launched with those remaining survivors, however, and today, thanks to that legendary reproductive potency for which rodents are known, each and every contemporary pet hamster is thought to be the direct off-spring of those surviving three hamsters.

While their numbers began to grow and they naturally charmed the fortunate individuals who got to know them, those early hamsters and their progeny did not immediately take the pet world by storm. The species took a slight detour before that occurred.