Syrian Hamster | ||||||||||||||
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Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
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Most hamsters in American and English pet stores are Syrian (aka Golden) hamsters. Even the "Teddy Bear" and the so-called "Black Bear" hamsters are all recently bred varieties of Syrian hamsters. All of them may well indeed be the descendants of a single mother.
Hamsters have been used in scientific research in the study of many diseases.
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Discovery of the Syrian hamster
In 1839 British zoologist George Waterhouse reportedly found an elderly female hamster in Syria, naming it Cricetus auratus, the Golden Hamster. The hamster's fur was on display at the British Museum. The Syrian hamster was then ignored by European science for the next century. Around 1930, zoologist and Professor at the University of Jerusalem Aharoni found a mother and litter of hamsters in the Syrian desert. By the time he got back to his lab, most had died or escaped. The remaining hamsters were given to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where they were successfully bred. They were a bit bigger than the ones Waterhouse found, so they were named Mesocricetus auratus, although they were probably the same species. Mesocricetus auratus is the name that Syrian hamsters go by today.
Descendants of these hamsters were shipped to scientific labs around the world, for use as research animals. They arrived in the United Kingdom in 1931, and in 1938 reached the United States. Just about all Golden Hamsters are descended from the original litter found in Syria, except for a few that were brought into the United States by travellers who found them in the desert. A separate stock of hamsters was imported into the US in 1971, but it isn't known if any of today's North American pets are descended from them.
Today there are two other popular varieties of hamsters sold in pet stores: The Dwarf Campbells Russian and the Winter White Russian hamsters. Further, there are two other breeds (Chinese and the Roborovski hamster) that on occasion can be found.
Types of hamsters (Partial list)
Note that there are some rodents sometimes called "hamsters" that are not part of the hamster family. These rodents include
External links
About Hamsters on Petwebsite.Com (http://www.petwebsite.com/about_hamsters.htm)
Genome information (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?mode=Info&id=10036&lvl=3&keep=1&srchmode=1&unlock)
Hamsteriffic.Com (http://www.hamsterific.com/)
California Hamster Association (http://www.geocities.com/CalHamAssoc/index)
American Hamster Association (http://www.hamsterclub.org/)
Hamsters Galore! Community website (http://communities.msn.com/Hamstersgalore)
Owners of pet hamsters can find help and support at this website: The Alt.Pets.Hamsters newsgroup FAQ (http://www.rodentrefuge.co.uk/hamsterfaq)
Hampsterdance2 (http://www.hampsterdance2.com/)
Hampsterdeath, part of freepuzzlearena (http://www.cs.rose-hulman.edu/~yerricde/b/)
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