Talk:Golden hamster

message: I'm considering adding a line or two about "alien hamsters" (hairless syrians).  It's a rather detrimental mutation (along with no hair, females can't lactate) and are very carefully bred with haired parents that carry the gene.  But they are somewhat more of a novelty and can't stand alone as a breed (due to females basically being unable to rear young).  Any thoughts?
:This variation is caused by breeding 2 satin furred animals.  It is not a desirable trait and the NHC recommends against breeding for this trait. Mlatham23 (talk) 02:05, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: What does "NHC" mean? I assume the H means "hamster" but what is the rest? You should add it to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHC  108.81.134.236 (talk) 08:16, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Alien Hamster

message: Black bear hamster ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 21:25, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge? 

message: How much does a Syrian hamster weigh? What's the expectation for the average weight of a Syrian hamster? The article gives information for what you could expect for the length of a Syrian hamster [the article states "Adults grow from 5 to 7 inches (12.5 to 17.5 cm) in length"], but no information for what you could reasonably expect a Syrian hamster to weigh.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kwakkles (talk • contribs) 04:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  How much does a Syrian hamster weigh?  

message: The Golden Hamster has been bred into many colors and long haired also. The current picture does not represent the current Syrian Hamster as it appears in the wild in Syria so therefore should be changed. The current picture could be moved to another part of the article but I believe the lead picture should represent the original short haired version as it appears in the wild in Syria because this article is about the syrian hamster. On another point I have a actual hamster that is a hybrid of a Big Golden Hamster crossed with a little Siberian Hamster which was long haired but did not have the very long hair near the tale like a angora Golden Hamster. The hamster is one quarter siberian hamster and three quarters syrian hamster. I mated the hybrid female with another Peach colored Golden Hamster. The weird thing is that most of the babies all appear as Golden Hamster but one is much smaller then the rest and looks like one of those little siberian hamsters but with long hair. It came from the same litter and is so much different then its brothers and sisters in both form and color. It was the last one to be weened from the mother. I am going to keep this little one to breed with perhaps crossing it back with a full blooded siberian hampster. Hybrids are so cool. 108.81.134.236 (talk) 08:07, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original Color Pic Needed in the Lead 

message: says, "Syrian/golden hamster is currently mid importance for rodents... Maybe the species should be high?"
I changed the importance here to top. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rodents/Assessment#Importance_scale assigns top importance to "topics of a continental or global nature". Syrian hamster is one of world's most popular pets and one of world's most important research animals. In the field of rodents this is a top importance animal.  Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:24, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. No objection if you want to bump the domestication article back up to high (it just seemed weird to me to have something that's clearly a subtopic rated with a higher importance than it's parent topic). Plantdrew (talk) 21:45, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Importance ranking

message: I just removed content from this article on animal testing. I put all content with citations into a new article, animal testing on Syrian hamsters. I then copied the lead of that article here, and linked to the main article. This section could be expanded but I think before the coverage of specific conditions was excessive and now there is a review of everything. I changed the section title from "use in scientific research" to "use in animal testing" because that is how other similar Wikipedia articles are named.  Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:32, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge of animal testing content to own article 

message: I just made these articles live and linked them from here.
*Syrian hamster breeding
*Syrian hamster care
*Syrian hamster behavior
*Hamster cage
The hamster cage article has more Syrian hamster information but much applies to any hamster.  Blue Rasberry (talk) 04:19, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introducing some sub articles 

message: You suggested a merge of Domestication of the Syrian hamster into this article. I do not immediately see why - this seems like WP:UNDUE detail for me adding about 10k of prose to this article when I think that would be excessive. Can you say a bit more, and also give an opinion about whether these should be merged?
*Syrian hamster behavior
*Syrian hamster breeding
*Syrian hamster care
*Syrian hamster variations
*Laboratory Syrian hamster
My initial view without knowing what you see is that all of these can stand alone, none of them are more suitable for a merge here than any other, and all of these are likely to develop further on their own. Thanks.  Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:05, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: On the contrary, the extremely short "Syrian hamster behavior" should definitely be merged into the species article, the rest could be merged into an article about hamsters in captivity. Note that the Syrian hamster article itself is not particularly long. We don't need this many WP:content forks, especially when there is no reason at all for splitting (size limit is not even close). As for "undue detail", that goes mainly for the overuse of quotes, which may not be appropriate anyway. I suggest you look at some previously promoted articles about animals to see what goes and what does not, a related example could be Camas pocket gopher, which is much longer than this one. FunkMonk (talk) 13:10, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge proposal 

message: , if multiple people register concern with a source, then you do NOT get to force it in by edit-warring . This is the blog of a pet food company, written by whatever employee has the job of answering customer questions; it does not fulfill our requirements for reliability. Please find a better source or desist from trying to add this material. (BTW, edit-warring with an admin is generally considered a suboptimal choice.) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:01, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unreliable sources 

message: *
The Germans are great lovers of hamsters and excellent in documenting natural history. I do not understand German, but I notice hamster resources from time to time in German language. There is this book by this zoologist, Rolf Gattermann, who has a history of publication and research on hamsters. The book came out this year and is more than 400 pages on the Syrian hamster. 
I expect that this book is authoritative on many details which this article requires to be complete, and so I am sharing it here.  Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:45, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gattermann's ''Der Goldhamster Mesocricetus auratus'', 2021 book 

message: WP:NOTHOWTO; not enough encyclopedic content on hamster care as a standalone topic. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 23:52, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge of [[Syrian hamster care]] into [[Golden hamster]] 

message: “Golden hamster” is a misleading name. They can come in many, many different colors and patterns, not just golden. “Syrian hamster” isn’t as misleading and is much more common. It indicates that the hamster is from Syria, which is true. And, not only that, but every other article calls it “Syrian hamster”. Syrian hamster variations, Syrian hamster behavior, Syrian hamster breeding, they all call it “Syrian hamster”. Even the invalid Syrian hamster care (invalid because it is a how-to article, and Wikipedia dosen’t accept how-to content) calls it a Syrian hamster. So it’s safe to say that the title should be “Syrian hamster”, not “Golden hamster”. GenZenny (talk) 17:13, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change title to “Syrian hamster” 

message: Until 1971 all hamsters in labs and as pets descended from the female captured by Aharoni in 1930. In 1971 Michael R. Murphy, a Ph.D. student at M.I.T., and his wife, Janet Fearn Murphy, obtained wild hamsters from the vicinity of Aleppo, Syria, and brought them back to Boston. They were housed at N.H.M.H. and kept as a separately bred strain, the Murphy strain.  Murphy reasoned that the 1930 descendants might have been so inbred that this might be the cause of some unusual characteristics such as the ability to accept transplanted organs. The new availability of wild hamster has been useful for subsequent scientific research. 136.51.1.213 (talk) 17:55, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Following up on this, the writer of the above, commented on my talk page- she is the wife of the scientist and is keen the page represents the history - there's further clarification there from her. Lajmmoore (talk) 22:09, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Second capture was in 1971