Hamster Behavior: What Your Hamster's Body Language and Sounds Mean

In April 2004, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) was notified about a boy aged 3 years with diagnosed tularemia associated with a hamster bite. Tularemia has not been associated previously with pet hamsters. CDPHE conducted an investigation to determine whether other owners of hamsters were at risk. Clinicians and public health officials should be aware that pet hamsters are a potential source of tularemia.

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During January 2--February 8, the boy was exposed to six hamsters that his family had purchased from a pet store in the Denver metropolitan area. Each hamster reportedly died from "wet tail disease" (i.e., diarrhea) within 1 week of purchase. One hamster bit the child on the left ring finger shortly before it died. Seven days later, the child had fever, malaise, painful left axillary lymphadenopathy, and skin sloughing at the bite site. After treatment with amoxicillin clavulanate failed, the patient underwent excisional biopsy of a left axillary lymph node 49 days after symptom onset for persistent painful lymphadenopathy and intermittent fever. Tissue culture yielded a suspected Francisella tularensis isolate, which was confirmed by real-time polymerase chain reaction and timed-release fluorescence at the CDPHE laboratory. Convalescent serology was positive at a titer of 4,096, and the isolate was identified by CDC as type B. No other risk factors for tularemia exposure were identified, including no other animal contact, no exposure to game meat, and no known mosquito, tick, or fly bites. The patient improved after treatment with ciprofloxacin.

Workers at the pet store reported an unusual number of deaths among hamsters but not other animals during January--February; no carcasses were available for testing. One of two cats kept as store pets had a positive serologic test for F. tularensis at a titer of 256. Neither cat had appeared ill to store employees.

Lists of employees, pet suppliers, and customers who purchased hamsters during December 2003--February 2004 were obtained from the store owner. Fifteen of 18 customers were located and interviewed. Eight of these had hamsters that died within 2 weeks of purchase, but all carcasses had been disposed of and were unavailable for testing. One customer and one employee who had febrile illness after being bitten by hamsters from the store were negative for F. tularensis by serologic testing. The same customer's hamster was available, and it was also negative for F. tularensis by serology and culture.

Approximately 80% of the 50 hamsters at the pet store came from customers who had pets with unanticipated litters. The other 20% were purchased from two small-pet breeders. These breeders were contacted, and neither reported an unusually high number of deaths of hamsters or other animals. One breeder also supplied animals to two pet stores in Wyoming. The Wyoming Department of Health had not been notified of any tularemia cases linked to these stores.

Confirmation of a hamster as the infectious source was limited by the delay between the patient's illness onset and diagnosis and subsequent lack of availability of implicated hamsters for testing. Nonetheless, the hamster that bit the patient was the most likely cause of infection because no other exposures or risk factors were identified. The positive serologic test for F. tularensis in a pet cat at the store suggested that other animals in the store might have been exposed to F. tularensis. In addition, the proximity of the onset of the patient's illness to the timing of the hamster bite, reports of illness among hamsters, and the deaths of hamsters at the pet store indicated an infected hamster as the likely source of illness. A possible scenario, similar to an outbreak of tularemia that involved zoo primates (1), is that infected wild rodents infested the store and spread the infection to hamsters by urinating and defecating through metal screens covering hamster cages. The infected cat might have had a subclinical or unrecognized illness after catching or eating an infected wild rodent.

Although tularemia has been associated with hamster hunting in Russia (2), it has not been associated previously with pet hamsters in the United States. However, clinicians and public health officials should be aware that pet hamsters might be a potential source of tularemia. Moreover, because F. tularensis is a potential agent of biologic terrorism (3), clinicians should have a heightened awareness of tularemia.

The experimental antiviral drug MK-4482 significantly decreased levels of virus and disease damage in the lungs of hamsters treated for SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to a new study from National Institutes of Health scientists. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19. MK-4482, delivered orally, is now in human clinical trials. Remdesivir, an antiviral drug already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use against COVID-19, must be provided intravenously, making its use primarily limited to clinical settings.

In their study, published in the journal Nature Communications, the scientists found MK-4482 treatment effective when provided up to 12 hours before or 12 hours after infecting the hamsters with SARS-CoV-2. These data suggest that MK-4482 treatment potentially could mitigate high-risk exposures to SARS-CoV-2, and might be used to treat established SARS-CoV-2 infection alone or possibly in combination with other agents.

The project involved three groups of hamsters: a pre-infection treatment group; a post-infection treatment group; and an untreated control group. For the two treatment groups, scientists administered MK-4482 orally every 12 hours for three days. At the conclusion of the study, the animals in each of the treatment groups had 100 times less infectious virus in their lungs than the control group. Animals in the two treatment groups also had significantly fewer lesions in the lungs than the control group.

hamster m (definite singular hamsteren, indefinite plural hamstere or hamstre or hamstrer, definite plural hamsterne or hamstrene)

Taxonomically hamsters are classified as a subfamily, Cricetinae, with 7 genera and 18 species in the family Muridae (Musser and Carleton, 1993). They are distributed throughout the Palearctic zone of Eurasia (Anderson and Jones, 1984). Original habitats of laboratory hamsters included clay deserts, shrub-covered plains, forested steppes, and/or cultivated fields.

Golden hamsters, Mesocricetus auratus, collected from a burrow 8 feet deep in a wheat field near Aleppo, Syria, were established as a colony of laboratory animals at the Microbiological Institute of Jerusalem in 1930. These animals were used to complete research on kala-azar delayed by the failure of Chinese hamsters to breed in captivity (Adler and Theodor, 1931). Adler took breeding pairs to Paris and London to establish colonies at research institutions there (Bruce and Hindle, 1934; Adler, 1948; Murphy, 1985). Breeding stock were distributed to investigators in India, Egypt, and the United States (Doull and Megrall, 1939; Poiley, 1950). Golden hamsters is the hamster species most frequently used in research (Hoffman et al., 1968; Siegel, 1985; Van Hoosier and McPherson, 1987), but very little is known about their nutritional requirements.

In the past 20 years, 7 additional hamster species have been used as laboratory animals. Animals identified as strain MHH:EPH are maintained in Hannover, Germany (Reznik et al., 1978; Mohr and Ernst, 1987). Mouse-like Chinese striped hamsters, Cricetulus barabensis, are used in research in cytogenetics, diabetes, and toxicology (Calland et al., 1986; Diani and Gerritsen, 1987). The large guinea-pig-like European hamster, Cricetus cricetus, formerly considered a pest in agricultural areas, is now a model for research in carcinogenesis. Dwarf hamsters, Phodopus campbelli and P. sungorus, of southern and western Siberia, are used in research in cytogenetics, carcinogenesis, diabetes mellitus, obesity, photoperiod changes, and social behavior (Pogosianz and Sokova, 1967; Hoffmann, 1973; Daly, 1975; Gamperl et al., 1978; Hoffmann, 1978. Steinlechner et al., 1983; Wade and Bartness, 1984; Pond et al., 1987; Ruf et al., 1991). Turkish hamsters, Mesocricetus brandti, are used in hibernation, taxonomy, and cytogenetics research (Lyman and O'Brien, 1977; Lyman et al., 1981, 1983; Todd et al., 1972). Colonies of the Romanian hamster, Mesocricetus neutoni , were established in Bucharest and used for research in cytogenetics and taxonomy (Hamar and Schutowa, 1966; Murphy, 1977; Popescu and DiPaolo, 1980). The Armenian, or migratory hamster, Cricetulus migratorius , is used on a limited basis in cytogenetics and oncology research (Lavappa and Yerganian, 1970; Cantrell and Padovan, 1987) (see Table 5-1). 2ff7e9595c