Most people love nature. It is in our “nature” to do so. It apparently is also in our “nature” to want to bring nature inside with us. Think about it…dogs, cats, etc. - all those animals that we think of as pets.

Because of our need to bring nature, i.e. pets, indoors the pet industry does about $260 billion worth of business each and every year. About half of that is for new pets to bring into our homes and the other half is the money needed to feed them!

As you probably know, here in the U.S. dogs are number one on the pet ownership list with cats in second place. Fish are in third place with rodents (hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, etc.) edging out birds for fourth place and the birds just edging out reptiles.

At one time or another I have had all of those things. I have a dog and two cats at this time. Everyone knows I love snakes, at one time I had a parakeet and a great horned owl and I’ve raised white rats. At another time I had white mice, and I’ve had any number of hamsters and gerbils.

White rats (which are albino Norway rats) are considered the most intelligent of the rodents, but the hamster has to be the cutest! There are 19 different kinds of “rats” known as hamsters. The one we are most familiar with is the Syrian or golden hamster. Their lineage dates back about 11 million years and they are native to…as you would guess…the Middle East and specifically Syria.

In 1930, a zoologist caught a male and a female hamster in Syria and took them to Jerusalem. He developed a lab colony there and then after a few years shipped a bunch to the U.S. While they started out as lab animals, because of their docile nature and “cuteness”, they soon became pets.

The term “hamster” refers to hoarding and if you have ever had a pet hamster you know that they have large pouches on each side of the jaw in which they “hoard” an amazing amount of food to take back to their burrow. They also breed like rabbits.

A hamster can breed four weeks after birth. Three weeks after breeding the female can give birth to up to 10 babies that are mature in four more weeks. She can have up to five litters a year and she is reproductively capable for about two years. Thus, one female can produce up to 100 babies and those “kids” can provide her with 10,000 grandkids, which can provide up to one million great-grand “kids”. That’s a lot of hamsters.

Gerbils have a similar story. They are originally from Mongolia, arriving in the U.S. in 1954. The guinea pigs, the third most popular rodent in the U.S., are from South America and they were originally domesticated for food. Like the hamster and gerbil, they were used a great deal in lab experiments hence the term “guinea pig” used to describe anyone who is tested in some way or another. Use of these three “cute” rodents in labs has diminished as white mice (albino house mice) and white rats, which aren’t nearly as cute as the other three, are now the most often used lab animals.