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Hamster
Hamsters are rodents belonging to the subfamily Cricetinae. The subfamily contains about 25 species, classified in six or seven genera.〔Fox, Sue. 2006. Hamsters. T.F.H. Publications Inc.〕 They have become established as popular small house pets〔 and partly because they are easy to breed in captivity, hamsters are often used as laboratory animals.
In the wild, hamsters are crepuscular and remain underground during the day to avoid being caught by predators. They feed primarily on seeds, fruits, and vegetation, and will occasionally eat burrowing insects. They have elongated cheek pouches extending to their shoulders in which they carry food back to their burrows.
Hamster behavior varies depending on their environment, genetics, and interaction with people.
==History==
Although the Syrian hamster or golden hamster (''Mesocricetus auratus'') was first described scientifically by George Robert Waterhouse in 1839, researchers were not able to successfully breed and domesticate hamsters until 1939.〔Barrie, Anmarie. 1995. Hamsters as a New Pet. T.F.H. Publications Inc., NJ ISBN 0-86622-610-9.〕 The entire laboratory and pet populations of Syrian hamsters appear to be descendants of a single brother-sister pairing. These littermates were captured and imported in 1930 from Aleppo () by Israel Aharoni, a zoologist of the University of Jerusalem.〔Fritzsche, Peter. 2008. Hamsters: A Complete Pet Owner’s Manual. Barron’s Educational Series Inc., NY ISBN 0-7641-3927-4.〕 In Jerusalem, the hamsters bred very successfully. Years later, animals of this original breeding colony were exported to the USA, where Syrian hamsters became one of the most popular pets and laboratory animals. Comparative studies of domestic and wild Syrian hamsters have shown reduced genetic variability in the domestic strain. However, the differences in behavioral, chronobiological, morphometrical, hematological, and biochemical parameters are relatively small and fall into the expected range of interstrain variations in other laboratory animals.〔Kuhnen, G. (2002). Comfortable quarters for hamsters in research institutions. In "Comfortable Quarters for Laboratory Animals" Eds V. Reinhardt and A. Reinhardt. Animal Welfare Institute, Washington DC. pp.33-37〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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