Hamsters

Here Are Some Things You Need to Know About Hamsters!

Are you looking to get your very first pet hamster?

Before you drive up to the closest pet store, there are a few things you need to know about hamsters as pets to be a good and well-informed hamster parent.

These nocturnal rodents are one of the most popular small house pets and are extremely cute.

This blog post will act as a quick guide and will touch upon several areas such as history, species, diet, health, and housing.

So, without further ado, let’s get rolling!

A Quick Look at the History Of Hamsters

While there are 19 species of Hamsters, the Syrian hamster is the most common.

In 1839, George Robert Waterhouse first described the Syrian hamster scientifically. In 1939, researchers were successfully able to breed and domesticate these little rodents.

Did you know that the entire domestic population of Syrian hamsters are descendants of a single brother-sister pairing?   

In 1930, a zoologist named Israel Aharoni took the litter to his laboratory in the University of Jerusalem for a behavioral study. The lab workers found these rodents to be easy to look after, friendly, and full of character.

In fact, some of these hamsters were taken home by the lab workers and were probably the first domesticated hamsters in history.

Different Hamster Species

As I mentioned earlier, there are 19 species of hamsters, and we’ll go into detail about each of these in later blogs. However, the top five most popular species include:

Syrian Hamsters

Winter White Dwarf Hamsters

Roborovski hamster

Campbell’s Dwarf hamster

Chinese hamster

Hamster Diet and Health

Let’s first talk about food! Hamsters love their food, and there are a lot of things that you can feed your hamster.

Let’s take a look.

Commercial hamster food

Fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs

Boiled eggs, nut, mealworms

Timothy Hay

In later blogs, we will go through the specifics to what hamsters can and can’t eat in detail. In some cases, the answer isn’t always a definitive “Yes” or “No,” which is why it's important to go into detail.

Let’s Take a Look at Hamster Health

Hamsters are usually healthy animals. However, since they’re extremely small in size, minor injuries and illnesses can quickly take a turn for the worst.

Here are some common health issues:

Respiratory Infections

Abscesses

Regional enteritis and proliferative ileitis

Skin Diseases

Diarrhea

Of course, we will go through everything in detail in later blog posts.

Hamster Housing

Hamsters do best in cages that have a solid base and are 19 x 19 inches square and at least 6 inches in height. You’ll be able to find three types of cages on the market, which include the following:

Glass cages

Plastic cages

Wire cages

Hamsters love to burrow, so they need deep bedding. We’ll go into detail about it all in later blogs.

Conclusion

Hamsters have stolen millions of hearts all over the globe, which has made them one of the most popular small pets!

However, to have a happy and healthy hamster, you need to provide him with the right diet and environment.

Responsible pet parents should determine which hamster species is the best for them, and the telltale signs of common diseases.