Roborovski dwarf hamster
Phodopus roborovskii
— Where the name comes from
It bears the name of Vsevolod Roborovsky, a Russian officer who in the late 19th century crossed the Gobi and Tibet with Przhevalsky and continued exploring alone until a stroke stopped him in the middle of the desert. He collected this hamster in 1894: the smallest in the world, four and a half centimetres, carried to Europe inside the crates of an expedition looking for something else entirely.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Rodents
- Habitat
- Sandy deserts and semi-deserts with sparse vegetation
- Range
- Mongolia, northern China, eastern Kazakhstan, southern Russia
- Size
- 4.5–5.5 cm, 20–25 g
- Diet
- Seeds, insects, shoots
- Lifespan
- 3 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It is the smallest hamster known: it sits comfortably in a spoon.
- 02
It digs burrows as much as a metre and a half deep to escape the heat of the day.
- 03
It runs the equivalent of several kilometres a night looking for seeds.
— What sets it apart
Its speed is the despair of whoever keeps it in a cage and the reason for its survival in the desert: a Roborovski hamster covers in one night distances that, scaled to its size, amount to a human marathon every night for life. In the Gobi seeds are scattered and sparse, and the only way to find enough is never to stop. It is the pet that least of all will be picked up by hand, and the reason is written entirely in the place it comes from.
