Curious

[Van Diemen]

Hi all,

First let me say: I do not want to breed hamsters.
I only own 1 hammy anyway lol.

I am just insanely curious about the genetics of it all.

I have seen a ton of posts on here where people have claimed to have a certain type of hamster only to be told it doesn't exist lol.

What goes on??

People wanting to breed their hams and being told Noooo no no no (understandably from what i've read about things going wrong) - but why is it like this??

What happens in the wild??
Are there a ton of mutant hamsters running around or do they naturally know what they're doing?

Why are there so many different combinations that can't be bred together?

I am officially fascinated!

Anyone want to give me a Hamster Genetics for Dummies low down on it all?

[kyrilliondaemon]

Er... Thats a bit of a difficult request, especially since I'm not actually a breeder but here's the best I can do.

In the wild the dangerous mutations usually stay uncommon because if they're dangerous the hamster can't survive to breed again. Colour mutations usually get hamsters killed so don't really stay when they've happened. That makes breeding them way less likely to cause problems because the problematic genes just aren't there and whenever they develop the ham with them is unlikely to live long enough to reproduce.

In captivity hamsters are ok to have different colours and mutations are encouraged. They'll develop and be responsibly bred to be understood and allow the gene to survive. Dangerous mutations are kept alive because they're unusual or because they're in demand for whatever reason. This leaves a captive population with dangerous genes thriving, meaning that you have to be careful breeding because you really don't want to breed two hamsters with the same dangerous gene to each other - the offspring would really suffer for it.

So basically, the wild population has much less dangerous genes in it. The captive population has loads of dangerous genes that can't be bred out because getting rid of them would cost us a heck of a lot of colour variants.


Oh and people saying they've got a type that doesn't exist is partially certain stores misinforming people, partially different countries sometimes having different words for things.

[Van Diemen]

Cheers Kyrill

I feel a bit silly now haha, I have extensive basic knowledge of dog breeding ie. how we went from a wolf to a chihuahua lol but it didn't occur to me hamsters would be the same .

With larger mammals though they won't produce mutant young will they? I mean, it may not be pretty but it won't be a death sentence.

Why is it so different with hamsters?

[kyrilliondaemon]

Actually anything can have death sentence genes. Some genes in humans can be deadly or near deadly - they just often cause miscarriages and aren't as easily documented as in hamsters.

I'm not entirely sure why hamsters are just such an example but in mice, rats e.t.c you need to be careful breeding too. Dogs are also at risk - they can carry blindness, heart defects e.t.c, its just hamsters where the risk is told by the colouration rather than the pedigree and through loads of tests.

[Van Diemen]

I find this all amazing!

I am against a lot of pedigree dogs because they have been bred to look a certain way - which unfortunately leads to extreme health conditions. Like dogs with flat faces having breathing issues and ridge back dogs having appalling hips etc etc so I know what you mean in terms like that.
And obviously I understand what you mean about human genes too - it just seems so extreme in hamsters.

Like if two downs syndrome people have a baby, they are all most guaranteed a baby with downs syndrome too, but I can only think of a hand full of combos like that, that apply to humans. Same for cats and dogs etc.

With the hamsters it seems like there are limitless types you can own but only about 3 you can breed without producing things like eyeless whites.

I find it totally baffling!

[kyrilliondaemon]

The thing is that in hamsters it *might* be safe to breed some of the mixes we say not to, its just that there's a risk its unsafe and its safer to be careful than not careful and regret it.

Really experienced breeders can sometimes breed dom spot and banded together safely (for example), but they've got to have known the lineage for years and years and really know what they're doing first.

So basically most of the "don't breed this" aren't where its guaranteed to produce something as nasty as eyeless whites its just that theres a risk of it so its best avoided because you can't know if its safe until you try and find out.

[Angelhamster]

Perhaps another issue in hamsters is that captive hams come from a very small gene pool. Although so do humans! As Kryl has said defective mutations won't survive in the wild so animals who have to survive tend to conform to those most able to survive. Mutations however are what feed evolution - a lion that can run faster will catch more prey. So that gene line will be more successful. And then the zebra that can out run a lion will survive and pass on its fast gene.
Its interesting seeing how different European hams are compared to Syrians - for some reason it was advantageous to be bigger and more aggressive in Europe!?

[Van Diemen]

Ahh that makes more sense haha thanks!

Do you know much about the lineage stuff?

I'd love to see a punnet square with all the different colourings + lineage entered into it that presumably breeders use

[Van Diemen]

Are European ones a lot bigger then Angel?

I know nothing! haha

[radiocricket]

The one problem the fancy always faces are the newbie breeders getting into it for the wrong reasons. People get a hamster from the pet store, it's cute and friendly and cost them $5-$25 (3-15 pounds, 5-25 Euros) and think what a great way to make a little bit of extra money- hamsters have an average litter of 8-12 pups, multiply that out and it sounds great! They have no idea what litters involve and just how hard it can be to place pups.

The other kind of novice breeder is usually a younger individual whose only pets that they can breed are hamsters due to space, finances, for the younger individuals: parents. The urge to breed more cuteness can be hard to ignore.

Very few people approaching the fancy from either of these scenarios get started the right way. The hamsters are diminished and seen as being "just hamsters" without any regard or thought that their could be any complexity to breeding them. Of course everyone has to start somewhere but what's the best starting place? A person can most certainly get a hamster, fall for that cute little face and want to breed more but it's that next step that really makes the difference. Do they start researching it, going to the forums and learning more about it? Or do they go off to the pet store to buy a hamster of the opposite sex? There are just too many people that do the later.

How did I get my start? I saw a hamster in a pet store that I liked but it wasn't available so I looked online for a hamster breeder and was fortunate to find one very close by. When I went there to get a hamster, the breeder told me how all the genes of the hamsters are known and I was hooked. I started researching- printed off the River Road's genetics tutorial and started learning. I started reading the forums. I asked the breeder many questions. I learned to identify the different colors and knew what I wanted to work with and how to get to that point. I got a few more hamsters from the breeder and a few from pet stores if they had a gene I wanted/needed that the breeder didn't have. Still, that didn't prevent one of my litters of a pet store Black DS to a pet store Black Tort from producing two Anophthalmic Whites. It was a real learning lesson and was easy to see how things aren't as straight forward as you'd think they'd be. The DS of the male masked the Whitebellied gene and the Black Tort did have some white faults on her belly, but nothing excessive, the way you'd expect a "white belly" to look.

After I had worked with the basic genes for awhile and gained more experience with selection, I contacted other breeders for some additional genes. I didn't just want to approach reputable breeders for their breeding animals out of the blue. Think of it this way, if you wanted to breed a show line of Cocker Spaniels, would you start off by approaching the best breeders and ask for some of their dogs to breed and show? No, you'd start off with one of their dogs, or a dog from a different breeder, and start showing them. This way, when you approach a breeder with quality animals, they can see that not only are you willing to put in the work and time, you have started building your reputation and you respect the fancy.

Really, that's a big part of it, the novice breeders just don't respect the fancy. It seems that just because they're hamsters, people just have a very casual approach to owning and breeding them. That it's easy, that nothing too terrible can come of it, that they can just buy a breed quality hamster from the pet store. Most people have the common sense to know that if you're going to breed larger animals, cats, dogs, horses, etc... there's a good way to go about starting it, however they just don't take that same approach with hamsters.

As far as mutations in the wild, there aren't very many. Natural selection ensures that hamsters remain "wild type". Sometimes exceptions occur but it's very rare. This is why you don't find patterned squirrels, albino sparrows, black rabbits, etc.... Once any species is kept and bred by humans though, natural mutations do occur and since there's no chance of death occuring because camouflage is lost, the animal is able to reproduce and add more of the mutation into the gene pool (and usually, any mutations are found appealling and heavily propogated).

-Janice