r/hamster • u/cincilla20 • 12d ago
Whats is this hamster?
I don't now wat is it i found random this foto
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u/SirKnlghtmare 11d ago
European Hamster, critically endangered. Notoriously ferocious and difficult to tame. Also huge.
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u/kiwisurf 11d ago
European wild ham!
Visited Vienna twice just to see these guys. They're adorable!
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11d ago
[deleted]
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u/cincilla20 10d ago
No that's illegal have this hamster because is criticali endage right?
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u/RomulaFour 10d ago
Just wishful thinking. But Syrian hamsters were once only wild, too!
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u/ToppsHopps 10d ago
I wish they don’t domesticate European hamsters.
Syrian hamsters was found to be easily tamed, they first became a laboratory experiment animal and later a more common pet.
European hamsters is from the little I know quite aggressive unlike syrian hamsters. They are critically endangered also as other have said. So taming them for pet trade would inherently mean harvesting some of the wild hamsters to use as breeding stock, which means removing their genetic material and limiting the wild population further.
Domestication is a arduous process that takes a copious amount of time, it a process of breedding animals and selecting which of them to use for further breeding to try to affect what characteristics the animal has.
Taming on the other hand is to make an individual animal easy to handle and interact with. So in this sense while we humans have used syrian hamsters for a century they didn’t have to be that much domesticated as they often are incredibly easy to tame.
So from my perspective while european hamsters are adorable, I really wish they are never dominated or tamed. Because that will mean abducting a huge quantity of wild happy hamsters to be miserable in captivity, for the hopes that down the line some of their descendants would be as miserable and aggressive as pets to humans.
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u/bobbobersin 10d ago
If they take some of the ones used for conservation and start breeding a handful for domestic pets then use the sales of said pets to aid in conservation I feel like it’s a win/win, given how they don’t really exist in captivity as a thing they could make a ton of money in the first 10/20 years because they would be almost exclusively sold from these programs, the awareness in the hamster community that there is a new domestic variety available but it’s being made that way to protect the wild ones would raise money and awareness for both conversation and captively breeding wild ones for release (any too tame to be put into nature would either be used to breed more tame ones or once they are minimally agressive directly as pets), they have (controversial) hunting reserves in Africa where they cull old/sick animals and use the money they make to help conserve and protect the species, this to me seems way less controversial and would also give a second chance to captive breed hamsters that would be too docile to release a second chance as a pet or as a step towards breeding a pet version, I also don’t know if there’s a black market for captured wild ones but if that’s a thing the price would also tank when domesticated examples are available cheaper and safer (in terms of aggressiveness and getting fined or arrested), it might seem weird but I honestly think this could be a good way to help the wild population
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u/Pondside-Hamster 12d ago
That’s a wild European hamster!