Golden hamsters are ubiquitous worldwide as pets and research animals. Wild populations are restricted to a small area of the Middle East. The majority of the species' range is encompassed by the Aleppinian plateau in Syria. Golden hamsters have also been reported in areas of Eastern Turkey.
Biogeographic Regions: palearctic (Native )
Golden hamsters serve as a food source for many different predators, including foxes, mustelids, birds of prey, and snakes. Golden hamsters avoid predation by seeking shelter in their burrows and through vigilance. Their rapid reproductive rate means that golden hamster populations can withstand relatively high rates of predation.
Known Predators:
Anti-predator Adaptations: cryptic
Golden hamsters are medium-sized hamsters, with adult mass ranging from 100 to 125 g. They are significantly smaller than common hamsters (Cricetus cricetus) of eastern Europe and western Asia,and larger than Roborovski's desert hamsters (Phodopus roborovskii) of China and Mongolia. As with many hamsters, golden hamsters have a blunt rostrum, relatively small eyes, large ears, and a short (1.5 cm) tail. The fur is golden-brown above, fading to gray or white on the ventral surface. Some individuals may also possess a dark forehead patch and a black stripe on each side of the face running from the cheek to the neck.
Range mass: 100 to 125 g.
Range length: 13 to 13.5 cm.
Other Physical Features: endothermic ; heterothermic ; bilateral symmetry
Sexual Dimorphism: sexes alike
Average basal metabolic rate: 0.69 W.
Golden hamsters have relatively short life spans, 1.5 to 2 years on average. They can live nearly twice as long in captivity as in the wild.
Range lifespan
Status: captivity: 4 (high) years.
Typical lifespan
Status: wild: 1.5 to 2 years.
Average lifespan
Status: wild: 1.5-2 years.
Typical lifespan
Status: captivity: 2 to 2.5 years.
Historically, golden hamsters probably inhabited open steppe habitat, which once characterized the Aleppinian plateau and adjacent areas. As their range has become increasingly populated however, golden hamsters have shown an affinity for agricultural areas. Hamster burrows are often found in legume plots or near irrigation wells. The climate of the region inhabited by golden hamsters is seasonal. Summers are hot (35-38 degrees C) at midday and cold (6-15 degrees C) at night. Winters are cold (~10 degrees C) and wet. Overall, precipitation is very low (~336 mm/year).
Average elevation: 280-300 m.
Habitat Regions: temperate ; terrestrial
Terrestrial Biomes: savanna or grassland
Other Habitat Features: agricultural
Golden hamsters are omnivorous, feeding on seeds, nuts, and insects, including ants (Formicidae), flies (Diptera), cockroaches (Blattaria), and wasps (Hymenoptera).
Animal Foods: insects
Plant Foods: seeds, grains, and nuts
Foraging Behavior: stores or caches food
Primary Diet: omnivore
Like many small rodents, golden hamsters serve as a food source for many other animals. As a result of their diet of seeds and grains, they also disperse seeds, as seeds are often lost in the process of caching. Abandoned hamster burrows are often used by other animals, such as toads.
Ecosystem Impact: disperses seeds
Mutualist Species:
Because of their short gestation period and ability to spontaneously ovulate, golden hamsters are an excellent model organism for use in research. Many studies have been conducted in which hamsters were the test subjects. Hamsters are also extremely popular as pets. Many domestic varieties have been developed for the pet trade.
Positive Impacts: pet trade ; research and education
Golden hamsters are considered agricultural pests in the wild. The government of Syria provides rodenticides to farmers in hopes of controlling hamsters.
Negative Impacts: crop pest
Golden hamsters are listed as endangered by the IUCN because of their small geographic range and localized distribution. The greatest threat to wild populations is human encroachment on habitat. Hamsters continue to be trapped and poisoned as agricultural pests. Because of the wide use of golden hamsters as pets and research animals, the species is in no danger of becoming fully extinct, but wild populations are under threat.
US Federal List: no special status
CITES: no special status
State of Michigan List: no special status
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: vulnerable
Golden hamsters communicate mainly by scent marking, but they also employ a variety of auditory signals. They produce squeaking sounds in several situations, usually in association with sudden body movements. In addition, hamsters exhibit teeth chattering. Teeth chattering behavior is a sign of aggression. It has been recorded in 92% of male to male interactions observed, in 39% of female to female interactions, and in only 5% of male to female encounters. Young hamsters are able to produce ultrasonic squeaks that likely are important in maternal care of the young. Hamsters also rely on visual signals in communicating with conspecifics. In interactions between dominant and submissive individuals, the submissive individual will arch its back and lift its tail. The dominant individual will then mount the subordinate to assert dominance. In male to female interactions, the female will signal that she is ready to mate by taking a quick series of short steps, and assuming a posture in which the body is stretched out, the back legs are splayed, and the tail is up. This posture is referred to as the Lordosis posture. The female may remain in this position for up to 10 minutes. The male will follow the female and sniff and lick her genital region, likely to gather chemical signals. There has additionally been some speculation that the pelage of an individual hamster has a bearing on its social status. However, studies have had contradictory results.
Communication Channels: visual ; acoustic ; chemical
Other Communication Modes: scent marks
Perception Channels: visual ; tactile ; acoustic ; ultrasound ; chemical
Females indicate their receptiveness to males primarly through olfactory cues in vaginal secretions. When the female is ready to mate, she will increase the frequency of vaginal marking, a behavior characterized by pressing the vaginal region against a surface and moving forward a few inches.
Mating System: polygynous
Ovulation in mature female golden hamsters is mainly determined by photoperiod. Ovulation is induced by long photoperiods (>12.5 hours) and will continue indefinitely as long as the photoperiod remains long. If the photoperiod is reduced, or if females are exposed to complete darkness in a lab setting, they will stop ovulating. However, after 5 months, the females will acclimate to this shorter photoperiod and begin ovulating spontaneously. In the wild, this photoperiodic cycle ensures that young are born during the season most favorable for their survival.
Golden hamsters have a gestation period of 16 days, the shortest gestation period among eutherian mammals. Average parturition time is 1.5 to 2.5 hours, during which 8 to 12 young are born. The young are altricial at birth, born with their eyes closed. They first open their eyes at 12 to 14 days of age. Weaning occurs at 19 to 21 days, and the young become sexually mature at about 1 month of age.
Breeding interval: Females can give birth every month or so during the breeding season.
Breeding season: Golden hamsters breed during seasons with long photoperiods.
Range number of offspring: 4 to 15.
Average number of offspring: 8-12.
Average gestation period: 16 days.
Average weaning age: 19-21 days.
Average time to independence: 1 months.
Range age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female): 20 (low) days.
Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female): 26-30 days.
Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male): 42 days.
Key Reproductive Features: iteroparous ; seasonal breeding ; gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate); sexual ; viviparous
Average birth mass: 2.45 g.
Average gestation period: 16 days.
Average number of offspring: 9.
Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male)
Sex: male: 48 days.
Despite a short gestation period, golden hamsters exhibit prenatal investment sufficient for the offspring to exhibit genital development at birth that is comparable to animals with longer gestation periods. The mother alone cares for the young. In some situations, the mother may reduce the size of her litter through cannibalism. In the wild, this is likely a strategy employed in times of limited resources, but in captivity, cannibalism is often a response to some sort of anthropogenic disturbance.
Parental Investment: altricial ; pre-fertilization (Provisioning, Protecting: Female); pre-hatching/birth (Provisioning: Female, Protecting: Female); pre-weaning/fledging (Provisioning: Female, Protecting: Female)
The golden hamster or Syrian hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) is a rodent belonging to the hamster subfamily, Cricetinae.[2] Their natural geographical range is in an arid region of northern Syria and southern Turkey. Their numbers have been declining in the wild due to a loss of habitat from agriculture and deliberate elimination by humans.[1] Thus, wild golden hamsters are now considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.[3] However, captive breeding programs are well-established, and captive-bred golden hamsters are often kept as small house pets. They are also used as scientific research animals.
Syrian hamsters are larger than many of the dwarf hamsters kept as pocket pets (up to five times larger), though the wild European hamster exceeds Syrian hamsters in size.
Adult golden hamsters can reach around 6 in (15 cm) long, with a body mass of around 100–150 grams (3.5–5.3 oz) and lifespan of 2-3 years. Syrian hamsters from private breeders can be in the range of 175–225 grams (6.2–7.9 oz).[4]
Like most members of the subfamily, the golden hamster has expandable cheek pouches, which extend from its cheeks to its shoulders. In the wild, hamsters are larder hoarders; they use their cheek pouches to transport food to their burrows. Their name in the local Arabic dialect where they were found roughly translates to "mister saddlebags" (Arabic: أبو جراب) due to the amount of storage space in their cheek pouches.[5]
Sexually mature female hamsters come into heat (estrus) every four days. Golden hamsters and other species in the genus Mesocricetus have the shortest gestation period in any known placental mammal at around 16 days. Gestation has been known to last up to 21 days, but this is rare and almost always results in complications. They can produce large litters of 20 or more young, although the average litter size is between eight and 10 pups. If a mother hamster is inexperienced or feels threatened, she may abandon or eat her pups. A female hamster enters estrus almost immediately after giving birth, and can become pregnant despite already having a litter. This act puts stress on the mother's body and often results in very weak and undernourished young.
Golden hamsters originate from Syria and were first described by science in the 1797 second edition of The Natural History of Aleppo, a book written and edited by two Scottish physicians living in Syria.[6] The Syrian hamster was then recognized as a distinct species in 1839 by British zoologist George Robert Waterhouse, who named it Cricetus auratus or the "golden hamster". The skin of the holotype specimen is kept at the Natural History Museum in London.[7]
In 1930, Israel Aharoni, a zoologist and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, captured a mother hamster and her litter of pups in Aleppo, Syria. The hamsters were bred in Jerusalem as laboratory animals.
Descendants of the captive hamsters were shipped to Britain in 1931, where they came under the care of the Wellcome Bureau of Scientific Research. These bred and two more pairs were given to the Zoological Society of London in 1932. The descendants of these were passed on to private breeders in 1937. A separate stock of hamsters was exported from Syria to the United States in 1971, but mitochondrial DNA studies have established that all domestic golden hamsters are descended from one female – likely the one captured in 1930 in Syria.[8]
Since the species was named, the genus Cricetus has been subdivided and this species (together with several others) was separated into the genus Mesocricetus, leading to the currently accepted scientific name for the golden hamster of Mesocricetus auratus.[9]
Hamsters are very territorial and intolerant of each other; attacks against each other are commonplace. Exceptions do occur, usually when a female and male meet when the female is in heat, but even so, the female may attack the male after mating. In captivity, babies are separated from their mother and by sex after four weeks, as they sexually mature at four to five weeks old. Same-sex groups of siblings can stay with each other until they are about eight weeks old, at which point they will become territorial and fight with one another, sometimes to the death. Infanticide is not uncommon among female golden hamsters. In captivity, they may kill and eat healthy young as a result of the pups interacting with humans, for any foreign scent is treated as a threat. Females also eat their dead young in the wild.[10]
Golden hamsters mark their burrows with secretions from special scent glands on their hips called flank glands. Male hamsters in particular lick their bodies near the glands, creating damp spots on the fur, then drag their sides along objects to mark their territory. Females also use bodily secretions and feces.
Following Professor Aharoni's collection in 1930, only infrequent sightings and captures were reported in the wild. Finally, to confirm the current existence of the wild golden hamster in northern Syria and southern Turkey, two expeditions were carried out in September 1997 and March 1999. The researchers found and mapped 30 burrows. None of the inhabited burrows contained more than one adult. The team caught six females and seven males. One female was pregnant and gave birth to six pups. All these 19 caught golden hamsters, together with three wild individuals from the University of Aleppo, were shipped to Germany to form a new breeding stock.[11]
Observations of females in this wild population have revealed, contrary to laboratory populations, activity patterns are crepuscular rather than nocturnal, possibly to avoid nocturnal predators such as owls.[12] Owls, however, have also evolved to hunt at dusk and dawn, and even during the day on rare occasions, so the predator avoidance advantage may not apply to owls in particular. Another theory is that hamsters, which are extremely sensitive to temperature fluctuations, may be crepuscular to avoid the extreme temperatures of full daylight and night time temperatures.[13]
Golden hamsters in captivity run two to five miles per 24-hour period and can store up to one ton of food in a lifetime. They keep their food carefully separated from their urination and nesting areas. Very old hamsters with weak teeth break this "rule" by soaking hard seeds and nuts with urine to soften them for eating. Hamsters are extraordinary housekeepers and often sort through their hoards to clean and get rid of molding or rotting food. They gather food in the wild by foraging and carrying it home in their cheek pouches, which they empty by pushing it out through their open mouths, from back to front, with their paws, until it is empty. If a lot of food is available to carry, they may stuff the pouches so full that they cannot even close their mouths. Wild hamsters possibly behave similarly to those in captivity.[13]
Golden hamsters are used to model human medical conditions including various cancers, metabolic diseases, non-cancer respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases, and general health concerns.[14] In 2006 and 2007, golden hamsters accounted for 19% of the total Animal Welfare Act-covered animal research subjects in the United States.[15]
Golden hamsters are popular as house pets due to their docile, inquisitive nature, cuteness, and small size. However, these animals have some special requirements that must be met for them to be healthy. Although some people think of them as a pet for young children, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals recommends hamsters as pets only for people over age 6 and the child should be supervised by an adult.[16] Cages should be a suitable size, safe, comfortable, and interesting. If a hamster is constantly chewing and/or climbing on the bars of its cage then it needs more stimulation or a larger cage. The minimum recommended size for a hamster cage is 450 square inches (2,900 cm2), of continuous floor space (although the source of this recommendation is unknown). These can be made from a plastic storage bin or a large glass tank. The majority of hamster cages sold in pet stores do not meet these size requirements. Hamster Society Singapore (HHS) recommends a minimum of 4,000 square centimetres (620 sq in) for Syrian hamsters,[17] while Tierärztliche Vereinigung für Tierschutz (TVT) recommends giving them as much space as you can and at minimum 100 cm × 50 cm × 50 cm (L × W × H) which is 5,000 cm2 (780 sq in).[18]
A hamster wheel is a common type of environmental enrichment, and it is important that hamsters have a wheel in their cage. TVT recommends wheels should be at least 30 cm for Syrian hamsters, since smaller diameters lead to permanent spinal curvatures, especially in young animals. They also recommend a solid running surface because rungs or mesh can cause injury.[19] A hamster should be able to run on its wheel without arching its back. A hamster that has to run with an arched back can have back pain and spine problems. A variety of toys and cardboard tubes and boxes can help to provide enrichment, as they are energetic and need space to exercise.[20]
Most hamsters in American and British pet stores are golden hamsters. Originally, golden hamsters occurred in just one color – the mixture of brown, black, and gold, but they have since developed a variety of color and pattern mutations, including cream, white, blonde, cinnamon, tortoiseshell, black, three different shades of gray, dominant spot, banded, and dilute.
The practice of selective breeding of golden hamsters requires an understanding of their care, knowledge about breed variations, a plan for selective breeding, scheduling of the female body cycle, and the ability to manage a colony of hamsters.
Often long-haired hamsters are referred to by their nickname "teddy bear". They are identical to short-haired Syrians except for the hair length and can be found in any color, pattern, or other coat type available in the species. Male long-haired hamsters usually have longer fur than the female, culminating in a "skirt" of longer fur around their backsides. Long-haired females have a much shorter coat although it is still significantly longer than that of a short-haired female.
The golden hamster or Syrian hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) is a rodent belonging to the hamster subfamily, Cricetinae. Their natural geographical range is in an arid region of northern Syria and southern Turkey. Their numbers have been declining in the wild due to a loss of habitat from agriculture and deliberate elimination by humans. Thus, wild golden hamsters are now considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. However, captive breeding programs are well-established, and captive-bred golden hamsters are often kept as small house pets. They are also used as scientific research animals.
Syrian hamsters are larger than many of the dwarf hamsters kept as pocket pets (up to five times larger), though the wild European hamster exceeds Syrian hamsters in size.