I’m
sure you think that they
didn’t know too much about hamsters in 1700s
but you are wrong.
Scientists
discovered what they presume to be the
first
description of the Golden Hamster dating from the 1797. It was written
by two
brothers: Alexander and Patrick Russell and it’s title is: ”Natural
History of Aleppo”. The one who contributed the most was Alexander, his
younger
brother
having only small notes. But he is not the man you should thank for
bringing
the hamster to your house. He considered that the hamster was the same
specie
as the Common European Hamster and so he didn’t continued the studies
on him.
Only from now on the real hamster history begins so keep on reading.
The young
Curator of the London Zoological Society, George Robert
Waterhouse was the one who
introduced
the hamster as a new specie on the 9th April 1839 and
named
it
Syrian Hamster.
And guess
what? The specimen that he presented was a rather
elder female from Aleppo,
Syria.
The description was
published in the in the Society's proceedings of 1840 : "... This
species
is less than the Common Hamster (Cricetus Vulgaris) (this named has
been change
since them to Cricetus Cricetus) and is remarkable for its deep golden
yellow
colouring. The fur is moderately long and very soft and has a silk-like
gloss;
the deep yellow colouring extends over the upper parts and sides of the
head
and body and also over the outer sides of the limbs; on the back the
hairs are
brownish at the tips hence in this part the fur assumes a deeper hue
than on
the sides of the body; the sides of the throat and upper pans 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
female that George Robert Waterhouse
described is still at the Natural History Museum in London. It’s true
that she isn’t to nice to
look at but if you are interested you might make her a short visit. If
I will
tell you her name maybe you will find her easier: Item BM(NH)
1855.12.24.120(what a bad name for an old pioneer lady .
Some
records show that James Skeene brought some hamsters from Syria to the
UK. He
was the British Consul to Syria
and after he retired he went to Britain some
hamsters as a rewardJ. Sadly, he didn’t
registered any facts about the little
rodents. It seems that they have breed in the UK
until 1910, when we lost track
of them.
The
word gets a break from hamsters until the late 1920s. It seems that
Saul
Alder, a parasitologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem conducted
a study
on leishmaniasis disease, for which the Chinese hamster was an
excellent animal
model(I hope they weren’t to bad treated, I am totally against animal
testing
). He had some troubled in breeding them and because he didn’t wanted
to depend
on the shipments he received from China
he searched for a hamster specie that is native to the Middle west.
He
knew about the Syrian Hamster from what Waterhouse’s studies, but
someone
proposed to him to use the Grey or Migratory Hamster (Cricetulus
Migratorius)
which was and still is quite widespread in Asia
Minor.
The funny thing is the fact that(and you will discover that soon)
thanks to the
fact that the Chinese Hamster wasn’t in the mood for sex we now have
hamsters
in our homes.
And so
the hamster history continues.
Alder asked a
colleague from the Zoology Department to help him get some
endemic species. The colleague was Israel Aharoni, the first Jew
zoologist. At
that time Jerusalem
was under the rule of the Turks. Aharoni, a Jew in the Moslem world had
a trick
though. He helped the sultan in increasing his butterflies collection
and so he
was able to travel freely under the protection of the local Turkish
Sultan. He
collected just about every animal he came across in his trips and sent
them to Berlin.
In one
of his trip he found, after hours of hard work and digging, they
discovered from the depth of eight feet a complete nest, nicely
populated by a
female and her eleven young. He kept all them in a wooden box and left
them
alone for a short period of time. Later, when he looked in the box he
was
terrified of what happened: the female started to eat her puppies. A
man that
was with him quickly took her out and killed her(sadly, they didn’t
know to
much about hamster and the fact that they shall not be put together in
the same
box- especially Syrian Hamsters). Aharoni and his wife became foster
parents
for the little ones till one day they escaped. Aharoni found only nine
of the
ten pups and given them to Hein Ben-Menachem, the founder and head of
the
Hebrew University Animal Facilities on Mt. Scopas.
Ben-Menachem
put the hamsters
in a cage with a wooden floor.
And…surprise.
Five of them escaped by chewing their way outJ
and sadly died.
Israel
Aharoni, the Jew zoologist we talked about earlier was quite
skeptical that the remaining hamster would breed. Luckly that Hein
Ben-Menachem
had other ideas. He filled a large wire mesh cage with tightly packed
hay,
leaving only 5 cm brightly illuminated space on the top. Into this
space he
placed his female. Seeking darkness, the female began to burrow into
the hay. A
day or so later the male was placed into the cage. It proceeded to
chase the
female and finally caught up with her.
By then both
were tired and the
male was
presumably quite aroused. Their position in the burrow was more
favorable to
mating than to slaughter, and they mated. The first hamster colony was
prolific
and numbered 150 within the first year, although again various
authorities have
different figures: including strangely 365 for the first year.
Anyway, the
first laboratory-bred
hamsters were given to Alder who
published
a report on the first research using Syrian Hamsters a short time
later.
Realising the fragility of a single colony, Alder distributed stock to
various
other laboratories in order to breed them.
Prepare to
laugh: the Syrian Hamsters
arrived in England
in 1931 and were literally
smuggled into the country in Alder's coat pockets.
Why? I don’t have the
smallest idea. He given the hamsters to E. Hindle of the Zoological
Society of
London.
There
is general agreement that hamsters were first imported into the USA in
the summer of
1938, although the
exact
nature of the importation is confused as is the importation of stock to
mainland Europe.
Next,
there are records of another wild Syrian Hamster capturing in Aleppo:
in May and June
1971, American Michael R
Murphy
obtained thirteen animals at Aleppo.
Twelve of them (four males and eight females) were taken back to the
USA.
According
to Murphy, after only three days of handling, the wild hamsters were
tamed.
They mated successfully and had an average of 11 pups.
In
1978 another American, Bill Ducan of SW Medical School Dallas, Texas
made
a third capture in the same area and returned to the USA
with two females. Unfortunately,
there aren’t any records about them.
The
final part of our hamster history takes us in 1980, when a Rodent
Control Officer, while working at the Field Centre for the
International Centre
for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, captured two hamsters both
of which
had unfortunately died soon after. In November 1982 the same officer
captured,
at the same site, another pair of hamsters: sadly the male died within
a short
period, and although the female reached quarantine in England
safely,
no one tried to breed her. With the help of the Zoological Society of
London,
and Clinton Keeling, she arrived at Chris Henwood home in June 1983. In
the BHA's
first magazine that appeared in the Spring of 1992, Chris Henwood wrote
an
article in which he reveals the hamster history and continues with the
story of
the hamster he had. He says:” She was an extremely tame individual who
was up
and about at all times of the day.Sadly,
although every attempt was made to breed from her, all failed - I
assume due to
her age; she eventually died in January 1985 at a ripe old age. Since
then, as
far as I can ascertain, no further attempt has been made to capture
individuals
from the wild although it is rumoured that the Tel Aviv Zoological
Gardens has
wild caught stock and that the species does occur in Israel
proper”.
This
was the very long hamster history and it’s ends like this: they
lived happily ever after, having many many hamsters.
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