Golden hamster
Mesocricetus auratus
— Where the name comes from
Mesocricetus is “middle hamster”, for a size between the neighbouring genera; auratus is Latin, “golden”, from the colour of the coat. The Italian criceto comes from the late Latin cricetus, a loan from a Slavic language. The English hamster goes back instead to the Old High German hamustro, which seems to have meant “hoarder”: the one who lays in supplies — and the hamster, indeed, is nearly all pockets.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Rodents
- Habitat
- Arid steppe and cropland on sandy soil, in deep burrows
- Range
- A tiny wild population in northern Syria and southern Turkey
- Size
- 13–18 cm long, 100–150 g
- Diet
- Omnivore — seeds, grain, roots, insects
- Lifespan
- 2–3 years
— Characteristics
- 01
The cheek pouches reach as far as the shoulders and can hold half its own volume.
- 02
In the wild it is solitary and territorial: two adults in the same cage injure each other badly.
- 03
It digs burrows with separate chambers for sleeping, eating and storing supplies.
— What sets it apart
Practically every golden hamster in the world — laboratory and pet alike — descends from a single litter. In 1930 the zoologist Israel Aharoni dug in a field near Aleppo and found a female with twelve young; a few survived and were bred in Jerusalem, and from there they set out for laboratories and homes across the planet. Meanwhile, in Syria, the wild population has shrunk to the point of being classed as endangered: the species is everywhere in our cages and all but gone from where it was born.
