The Unintentional Free-Range Homing Hamster

The first and only Golden Hamster I kept was installed in a cage in a converted greenhouse. The cage, made by my father nearly 60 years ago, had a slanting front and could either have a glass slide for reptiles or a wire cage front for mammals or small birds. The type of cage front was of a particular type designed for housing budgerigars. The wire door swung outwards from side hinges and was fastened by an omega loop which fitted between the wires on the opposite side. One morning I went to feed the hamster or change its drinking water and noticed the door was not fastened. It was shut but not fastened as would happen by gravity with the front slanting inwards. I thought it odd and thought my father had perhaps fed the hamster and forgotten to close the door properly. About a week later he was feeding the hamster and noticed the door was not fastened, thinking I had not done the job properly.

A few days later I stepped off the central walkway onto the bare earth on the opposite side to the hamster’s cage. My foot disappeared into a hole. I excavated and found a tunnel about 10 cm bellow the surface going right round the bare earth with several interconnecting tunnels. I then realised that the hamster must have been leaving its cage at night, excavating the tunnels and then going back to the cage to eat, drink and sleep. The cage incidentally was about 120 cm from the ground. When the hamster managed to push open its door, overcoming the resistance of the omega loop, and set forth on its excursions, the door must have swung shut. The wanderer must have managed to pull back the door in some way in order to return to the cage and its sleeping place.

There are many reports of escaped animals trying to return to their cages but this was not so much an escape but an extension of the hamster’s home range. 

Domestic variety of Golden Hamster
Photo by Antony Colton on Flickr

Golden Hamsters in the wild are diurnal but in captivity are nocturnal. Do we know why?

in a previous article about Golden Hamsters, I wrote

After Rolf Gattermann’s death from cancer in 2006 at the age of 57, his team of collaborators, who had made Halle a centre of small rodent research, continued publishing their work and started new strands, including field work on the Golden Hamster in southern Turkey. One interesting paper, begun while Gattermann was still alive, reported that while in the laboratory male and female hamsters (whether derived from old line or from newly-caught individuals) are nocturnal, in the wild female hamsters are diurnal. They speculated that a balance in the environment whereby nocturnal predators (owls and foxes) are a more potent threat than diurnal ones (birds-of-prey and snakes) may be responsible.

Since then there have been a number of studies attempting to identify the stimuli which turn hamsters from diurnal in the wild to nocturnal in captivity. As far as I can see there has been no success. However, some smaller effects evoked by potential predators have been recorded. For example, hamsters exposed to the odour of domestic ferrets spent less time out of a simulated burrow. In another species, the pattern of activity was affected by the rodent community in which the hamster was living, the time out and about was shortened when there were aggressive gerbils around.

I wonder whether the nature of the housing has an effect, being reminded of the marked changes in thermoregulatory behaviour observed by Roger Avery, then in Bristol, and also by me, in lizards given different sorts of cage furnishings. The deep and dark burrow system in the wild is very different from the accommodation afforded to pet and laboratory hamsters. Sleeping quarters are not necessarily completely dark and the Golden Hamster in the wild is subject to a very different regime of light/dark periods to that in a cage. Some simple experiments could be done.

In the meantime we still do not know if the presence and perception of predators is responsible for the basic activity pattern in the wild of Golden Hamsters.

McPhee ME, Segal A, Johnston RE. 2010. Hamsters use predator odors as indirect cues of predation risk. Ethology 116, 517-523

McPhee ME, Ribbeck AE, Johnston RE. 2009. Male golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) are more reactive than females to a visual predator cue. Journal of Ethology 27, 137-141

Scheibler E, Wollnik F, Brodbeck D, Hummel E, Yuan S, Zhang, F-S, Zhang X-D, Fu H-P, Wu X-D. 2013. Species composition and interspecific behavior affects activity pattern of free-living desert hamsters in the Alashan Desert. Journal of Mammalogy 94, 448-458. (Note—not on the Golden Hamster)

History of the Golden Hamster: 6. Golden Hamsters kept in Scotland at the turn of the 20th Century

All the captive Golden Hamsters up to the 1970s were descended from a single litter collected by Israel Aharoni near Aleppo in 1930. That statement is correct but I was surprised when I learnt of a colony of Golden Hamsters being kept in Britain for thirty years until around 1910.

Seven years ago, I was scanning the magazines in W.H. Smith’s and noticed in a now-defunct but then I think new monthly, Small Furry Pets, an article by Dr Karl Shuker on the history of the Golden Hamster.

I was particularly interested in one paragraph:

Nothing more emerged regarding this newly-described species until 1879, when some live examples were brought back to England by James Skene, who had been working in the diplomatic service in Syria. These thrived and bred for 30 years…Then in 1910 the last generation of progeny descended from those original specimens died without breeding, and the golden hamster once again sank back into obscurity.

I was so intrigued that I bought the magazine and kept a copy of the article.

The only reference online to the hamsters brought back by James Skene was to an article written in 1992 by Chris Henwood, a noted keeper and writer on small rodents, for the now-defunct British Hamster Association:

So now if you take the old story as the truth then little was heard of the Golden Hamster for almost exactly 100 years. Wrong! In fact a group of unknown number was brought from Syria to the UK by James Skeene. He had been British Consul to Syria and on his retirement in 1880 returned to Britain. I can sadly find no reference that he wrote anything about the species in general or his animals in particular, and if anyone can help with this area I would be very grateful. It does however appear that they bred in this country at least until 1910 when the last individuals appear to have either died or been destroyed (perhaps on the death of Skeene?).

4th edition of Reynolds's
booklet

Only when I obtained the paper by the late Rolf Gattermann and his colleagues on the collection and ecology of Golden Hamsters in the late 1990s did I get any further information. They listed the collections (dead and alive) over the years, and for 1880 listed Skene, with the information having come from a book published in 1954 by H.W. Reynolds and published by the Zoological Society of London.

I could not find a copy of Reynolds’s book (really a booklet since it is only 32 pages) for sale. But the ZSL Library has two copies and their superb service to Fellows soon had a copy on my desk. This is what Reynolds wrote:

A single preserved specimen, without any particulars recorded, is in the Beirut Museum, and I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Rosslyn Bruce D.D., F.L.S., for the only other authentic record of specimens being found in the last century. According to Dr Rosslyn Bruce, his grandfather, James Henry Skene, of Rubislaw—who was for many years Consul-General at Aleppo, caught and bred a large number of Golden Hamsters and upon his retirement, in 1880, he brought back to Edinburgh a number of live specimens which were shared among is family and friends. This stock is understood to have bred in captivity for some thirty years, then the strain died out.

In this story we have three people of interest:

James Henry Skene (1812-1886)

Skene was a soldier, writer and diplomat. He served in the 73rd Regiment of Foot (later and eventually incorporated into the Black Watch). He sold his commission to settle in Greece, travel and write books on the region. His wife, Rhalou, whom he married in 1832, was a Fanariot. According to the family history, ‘He eventually became attached to the services of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, English [sic] Ambassador at Constantinople, and for his services during the Crimean War was appointed Vice-Consul at Constantinople, and afterwards Consul-General at Aleppo, from which office he retired in 1880, and died at Geneva on 3rd October, 1886’.

Skene’s daughter, Jane, was the mother of Rosslyn Bruce*.

Rosslyn Bruce (1871-1956)

Bruce is listed as a clergyman and a naturalist but I suspect that is the wrong order of precedence of his interests. He was in many ways the epitome of the old CofE wealthy parson. He had many interests—including hoaxes—and clearly enjoyed pulling the wool over the eyes of church authorities. He was born in Nottinghamshire, the son of Canon Lloyd Stewart Bruce and Jane Skene, one of eleven children. After divinity at Oxford (he was secretary of the Union but lost an election for the presidency to the evolution-denier Hilaire Belloc) he became a curate in Soho where he campaigned for better living conditions for children whose parents were on the stage and for the education of mothers in the care of babies (still necessary 120 years later).

His family controlled the living at Clifton in Nottinghamshire and Bruce was installed as rector there. (This story has many of the elements of an Anthony Trollope novel.) He broke his leg while fox hunting, an episode recounted in detail in the Nottingham Evening Post of 22 October 1907. A year later he married Rachel Gurney, a member of the banking family immortalised by W.S. Gilbert in his line from the judge (‘and a good judge too’) in Trial by Jury on how he had become a wealthy lawyer ‘by falling in love with a rich attorney’s elderly ugly daughter‘: ‘at length I became as rich as the Gurneys…’

From Clifton (later the site of the largest council housing estate in Europe) he moved to Edgbaston, Birmingham in 1912. During the First World War he went on Noel Baker’s humanitarian mission to the Balkans and served as chaplain to British troops in France.

In 1923 he became rector at Hustmonceux in East Sussex—and stayed there. The obituarist for The Times (21 January 1956) clearly thought he should have risen higher in the church hierarchy given he background and education. However, he clearly upset the upper reaches as newspaper explained:

He did much to beautify the ancient church of Herstmonceux, and fancifully explained how supernatural agencies had introduced new embellishments, for which the necessary faculty had not first been obtained from higher ecclesiastical authority. Such unorthodoxy of behaviour stood as a barrier to preferment that his abilities and devotion undoubtedly deserved.

The obituary went on to praise the gaiety of his company and his ‘deep love of all fellow creatures’.

Bruce’s interests emerge in the penultimate paragraph:

Rosslyn Bruce’s lifelong pastime was the care and breeding of animals. Horses, monkeys, birds, mice, rats, iguanas, snakes, dogs, ferrets, even bears and an elephant all passed through his cherishing hands. He was known as the greatest expert on smooth fox terriers, and bred several champions. He judged at dog shows far  and wide. One of Queen Victoria’s pets was a Skye terrier from his kennels.

Local press reports show that he gave talks about his animals kept in Nottinghamshire, Birmingham and Hurstmonceux and other animals can be added to the list: canaries, lovebirds, pigeons and a tortoise in his study; kangaroo, porcupines, racoons, chameleons, eagles and fleas. He told the Sussex Agricultural Express that his ambition as a boy was ‘to become the proprietor of a menagerie’.

His winding-up the church hierarchy extended to the news media. He told a reporter he had bred green mice—and the story, in modern terminology, went viral.

Rosslyn Bruce (centre) in 1916

Bruce appeared in the newspapers for another very sad reason that still resonates from 1912. Bruce’s sister, Kathleen, married Robert Falcon Scott—Scott of the Antarctic—and it was Rosslyn who informed the world in February 1913 that Kathleen, en route to New Zealand to meet the returning Terra Nova Expedition, had been informed of her husband’s death on the trek back from the South Pole.

There can be no doubt that the Reverend Doctor Bruce knew what he was talking about when he told Reynolds about the hamsters brought back to Scotland by Skene in 1880. I am still curious about the family and friends who kept the hamsters and how Bruce knew they had died out around 1910. Certainly, a number of the Skene family lived in Edinburgh (and helped bring up the eleven siblings of the  Bruce family after their mother, Jane, died in 1880, and their father in 1886).

Skene had many relatives and descendants. Do any of them know anything more or of anything written about his hamsters? And did Bruce himself have any of the offspring of Skene’s hamsters?

Harold William Reynolds (1907-1966)

UPDATE: Comments below have been used to update the text below.

1st Edition

I have not been able to find out much about Reynolds, the author of the hamster book who was told of Skene’s hamsters by Rosslyn Bruce. Local newspapers show that he was secretary of a fanciers’ hamster club for the midlands and north of England and in 1949 was living at 7 Milford Road, Walton-on-the-Hill, Stafford. He and other fanciers imported ‘panda’ hamsters—a black and white colour form—which had first been bred in the U.S.A. He always appeared in print, as was usual then, as H.W. My impression, from the emphasis on the suitability of hamsters for keeping in schools, is that he was a schoolteacher. However, I found on his marriage certificate that he was a civil servant.

I have found no trace of him after 1950. The fourth edition of his booklet, Golden Hamsters, was published by the Zoological Society of London. The first edition, though, he published himself in 1948 as ‘Belvedere Booklet No. 1’. The website of a hamster breeder in Cambridge states:

Mr Reynolds was a member of the earliest hamster clubs in the UK and held the show prefix ‘Belvedere’ for his animals—which was also the name of his house.

His book obviously sold well to run to four editions. But why was the 4th and last, in 1954, published by the Zoological Society of London and not by Reynolds himself? My guess is that the booklet was useful to recommend to those seeking advice from the Zoo on hamsters during the hamster craze. Why Reynolds revised but did not publish the last edition remains unknown.

U.S. Version

I have just found on eBay’s U.S. site, an American edition of the book with the same text but more photographs. It was published by a Milo G. Denlinger in 1950 and printed in the U.S.A.

Reynolds published a second booklet, ‘Belvedere No. 2’, also in 1948. It was entitled Bishop the Hamster and Other Tales.

Edward Hindle provided an introduction to booklet No. 1 and provided a short review for the Autumn 1948 edition of Zoo Life. His introduction, written when he was Scientific Director at the Zoo, takes us back to the reason I began writing this series in the first place:

I received two pairs of these animals from Dr. S. Adler in the following year, and built up a stock maintained first at Hampstead and subsequently in my department at the University of Glasgow From the outset I had no difficulty in breeding them and was able to distribute specimens to any one interested. The London Zoological Gardens received a few pairs shortly before the war, which bred so prolifically that they were put on sale, and helped to make the Golden Hamster known to a much wider public.
Their rapid increase in general popularity dates from the end of the war and now they seem to have become thoroughly established as a domestic pet. 

UPDATED 23 October 2025

*Francis Rosslyn Courteney Bruce at birth; Rosslyn Francis Courteney at death.

Reynolds HW. 1948. Golden Hamsters. 1st edition. Stafford

Reynolds HW. 1954. Golden Hamsters. 4th edition. London: Zoological Society of London

Reynolds HW. 1950. Golden Hamsters. USA: Milo G Denlinger

Skene WF (editor). 1887. Memorials of the Family of Skene of Skene. Aberdeen: New Spalding Club

History of the Golden Hamster: 5. The rejected hamster

Domestication of the Golden Hamster was a contingent event: contingent on Israel Aharoni being asked to collect hamsters to replace the Chinese hamster; contingent on their capture, rearing and breeding; contingent on their suitability as a host for leishmaniasis, and contingent on their attractiveness and suitability as a domestic pet. Had they not been suitable for research on a nasty human disease or unable to be bred in the laboratory they would soon have been discarded by Saul Adler. Indeed that is exactly what happened to another species of hamster collected by Aharoni in Syria for Adler.

The standard animal for leishmaniasis research was the Chinese Hamster. As I wrote previously Adler imported them from the Far East since his animal house was unable to breed them. There has been some discussion of whether Adler knew there were two species, including the Golden Hamster, in the Middle East. However, it is quite clear from from Adler’s account written in 1948 that it was Cricetulus phaeus that he asked Aharoni to bring back alive, a species closely related to the Chinese Hamster (then Cricetulus griseus) and, therefore, perhaps likely to be suitable as a host for Leishmania. This is what Adler wrote:

Prof. Aharoni undertook to bring specimens of Cricetulus phaeus for our work. In addition to getting specimens of Cricetulus phaeus (which were unsatisfactory because they did not breed in captivity), Prof. Aharoni brought back a litter of eight golden hamsters collected near Aleppo…

So, because the Golden Hamster was found easy to breed and to be a suitable host for Leishmania, that species was retained and maintained in Jerusalem. Mesocricetus (then Cricetus) auratus was in: the smaller Cricetulus phaeus was out.

Cricetulus phaeus has now been lumped into Cricetulus migratorius and is known as the Grey (or Gray in the U.S.A.) Dwarf Hamster. It has a wide distribution from Eastern Europe to Mongolia. The Chinese Hamster is now the Striped Dwarf Hamster, Cricetulus barabensis, formerly griseus, found from Russia to Korea and as far south as Shanghai.

Both species have been bred regularly in captivity. Indeed Chinese Hamsters are fairly standard laboratory animals and sometimes seen in pet shops. Why Adler’s animal house was unable to breed either is not known, since the methods of introducing males and females used for Golden Hamsters also work for these much smaller species.

Adler S. 1948. Origin of the Golden Hamster Cricetus auratus as a laboratory animal. Nature 162, 256-257.

Kryštufek B. 2017. Family Cricetidae (part). Pp 282-283 in: Wilson DE, Lacher TE, Mittermeier RA (editors). Handbook of Mammals of the World, Volume 7, Rodents II. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions.

Haslauer R. 2017. Family Cricetidae (part). Pp 283-285 in: Wilson DE, Lacher TE, Mittermeier RA (editors). Handbook of Mammals of the World, Volume 7, Rodents II. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions.

Hobbs KR. 1987. Hamsters. In, The UFAW Handbook on the Care and Management of Laboratory Animals, edited by TB Poole, pp 377-392. Harlow: Longman.

History of the Golden Hamster: 4. Closely-related hamster species

The genus, Mesocricetus, to which the Golden or Syrian Hamster is assigned has, at present, four recognised species living in south-eastern Europe and the Middle East.

I have scanned, separated and labelled the illustrations of the four species in Volume 7 of Handbook of Mammals of the World (a superb series now completed in nine volumes—a true work of scholarship and a publishing triumph for Lynx Edicions). The species in some respects are similar but there are distinct morphological and genetic differences. Experiments on sexual preferences have shown that individuals do recognise potential mates of their own species. They seem to good and proper ‘biological species’ although it remains possible that one of them may be ‘split’ at some time as more data accumulate.

Illustrations extracted from Volume 7 of Mammals of the World
The Golden Hamster is also known as the Syrian Hamster and
Brandt's Hamster as the Turkish Hamster

All are solitary, building burrows in a mixture of open habitats often including agricultural fields. The burrows vary in detail but a vertical or near vertical shaft leads from the entrance to a horizontal shaft from which lead food stores, nest chamber and latrines. The nest chamber may be deep—as the labourers found when digging out the nest of a Golden Hamster in 1930.

The propensity of hamsters to eat agricultural crops and their rapid rate of reproduction (females mature at four weeks and can produce a litter averaging nine pups per month) have led to some being considered as agricultural pests in the past.

They feed variously on seeds, green vegetation and tubers along with insects. The massive cheek pouches which extend down each side of the body can be stuffed with food during forays to the surface and then emptied, using pressure from the paws, into underground caches. Time spent on the surface and exposure to predators is, therefore, minimised. Hamstering is a good term to describe hotel guests who stuff their bags with food from the breakfast buffet before they set off for a day with lunch not provided—and for some guests even when it is.

The ranges of the species are shown below:

Distribution of the four species of Mesocricetus. Modified from Yigit et al.
The range of M. brandti extends to north-west Iran

The current conservation status varies from ‘Least Concern’ (M. raddei) through ‘Near-Threatened’ (M. brandti and M.newtoni) to ‘Vulnerable’ (M. auratus), the latter on grounds of small range, habitat loss and population decline.

Kryštufek B. 2017. Family Cricetidae (part). Pp 282-283 in: Wilson DE, Lacher TE, Mittermeier RA (editors). Handbook of Mammals of the World, Volume 7, Rodents II. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions.

Yigit N, Çolak E, Gattermann R, Neumann K, Özkurt, S ,Gharkeloo MM, Fritzsche P,  Çolak R. 2006. Morphological and Biometrical Comparisons of Mesocricetus Nehring, 1898 (Mammalia: Rodentia) species distributed in the Palaearctic Region. Turkish Journal of Zoology 30, 291-299.

History of the Golden Hamster: 3. Collection of live wild hamsters in 1971, 1978 and 1999 and studies on them

Given that the collection of wild Golden Hamsters that led to all individuals in labs, zoos and homes being derived from one female was in 1930, it is not surprising that attempts have been made to obtain more from the wild in order to test for any signs of inbreeding or domestication.

Since 1930 there have been two successful attempts to capture, maintain and breed Golden Hamsters. There ahe also been other reports between 1949 and 1986. However, the numbers were very small and breeding attempts, if made, were unsuccessful.

Michael Ross Murphy (1971) and William Duncan (1978)

Michael Murphy with a newly-caught
hamster in 1971.
This is a photograph used to illustrate
Murphy's 1985 paper. This colour version
is from his obituary online.

The first successful collection and then breeding was in 1971 by the man who wrote the history of the hamster in 1985—the late Michael Ross Murphy. This is what he wrote:

When I started working with Syrian hamsters in 1967, there had been until then only three documented captures of wild hamsters in history—one before 1781, one around 1839 and one in 1930. Also, all domesticated golden hamsters were descendants of the three sibling survivors of Aharoni's ten orphans. So, to satisfy my own curiosity and obtain wild hamsters for comparative research…my wife, Janet, and I made a reconnaissance expedition to Aleppo, Syria, in May/June, 1971… In all, 13 wild hamsters were captured and 12 of them (four males and eight females) were brought back to the United States…Descendants of the animals I captured in Syria are being maintained by Andrew Lewis, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. In 1978, Bill Duncan, Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, Texas, made the historically third capture of live wild hamsters, returning two females to the United States.

Michael Murphy who died last year at the age of 73 was a psychologist and the footnote* is extracted from an obituary posted online by an undertaker in San Antonio, Texas.

I have found papers describing work on these wild hamsters, the first by Murphy himself on how males and females discriminate between potential mates of their own or closely-related species. Other papers used these hamsters for studies on amyloid protein. Bill Duncan, to whom Murphy referred, used ‘recently-wild’ and classical inbred strains in immunological research. However, after the early 1980s I have seen no further reference and I do not know if animals bred from the animals Murphy and Duncan collected have been maintained as a pure line at NIH or elsewhere. Nor do I know if any of the offspring of these wild animals or their crosses with the old inbred stock went to private collectors, the pet trade or zoos.

Rolf Gattermann (1999)

Rolf Gattermann with Golden Hamster

In 1999 the late Rolf Gattermann (1949-2006) with colleagues from the University of Halle in Germany and collaborators from the University of Aleppo, caught another group of Golden Hamsters and studied their habitat and burrows. In all 22 hamsters (19 from the expedition and 3 from the University of Aleppo) were taken back to Germany to form a new breeding stock for behavioural and genetic studies.

With all hamsters before 1999 being descended from a single mother there were two questions everybody was asking: was there inbreeding depression or changes in morphology and physiology as a result of domestication. The availability of new hamsters from the wild allowed these questions to be answered by Gattermann’s group. In their words:

There is evidence that genetic variation among lab and wild hamsters has only minor consequences on parameters such as body mass, body measurements, organ weights and behaviour.

However, the reproductive success of original laboratory male hamsters was lower than that of wild-derived males when tested with both types of female. no matter the genetic history of the mother, the litter size was markedly lower with a lab male as the father compared with a wild father. The physiological mechanism involved remains unknown.

After Rolf Gattermann’s death from cancer in 2006 at the age of 57, his team of collaborators, who had made Halle a centre of small rodent research, continued publishing their work and started new strands, including field work on the Golden Hamster in southern Turkey. One interesting paper, begun while Gattermann was still alive, reported that while in the laboratory male and female hamsters (whether derived from old line or from newly-caught individuals) are nocturnal, in the wild female hamsters are diurnal. They speculated that a balance in the environment whereby nocturnal predators (owls and foxes) are a more potent threat than diurnal ones (birds-of-prey and snakes) may be responsible:

Our observations indicate that the control of activity rhythms in hamsters is much more complex and more sensitive to environmental factors than previously realized, thus suggesting new questions for investigation. We do not know how hamster activity patterns vary throughout the year, but our findings raise the question of whether the activity patterns described in laboratories ever occur in nature.

The Halle group have recently published a book on the Golden Hamster in German†; this seems to be an updated version of a book written by Kittel in 1986 but it has not yet appeared at booksellers.

If one compares the recent distribution map of the Golden Hamster with the maps appearing almost daily that show the conflict in northern Syria, it becomes instantly obvious why any field work on that species has become impossible in recent years.

Current distribution of the Golden Hamster as deduced by Gattermann and his colleagues in 2001

Michael Murphy
in later life

*Dr. Murphy earned a B.A in Psychology from Occidental College in 1967 and received his Ph.D. in Psychology and Brain Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972. He did post-doctoral work as a Fellow of the Smithsonian Institution, and as a Staff Fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health (1972-1982). He conducted field research in Syria, Israel, and Romania. His field trip to Syria in 1971 with his wife resulted in the historic first successful capture of wild hamsters since the first specimens were captured in 1940. Dr. Murphy was the world's foremost expert on hamsters, important in medical research. At this time, he jokingly called himself a neuroosphreseolagnomesocricetologist, one who studies the brain structures for olfaction and natural behavior in hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus). Two of his many publications were important cover articles in the journal Science… In 1982 Dr. Murphy began his career working on medical protection for chemical weapons toxicity for the Air Force in San Antonio, first as contractor/manager with Systems Research Laboratories and later with the US government. He joined the US Air Force Research Laboratory in 1989 and was Chief of the Radio Frequency Radiation Branch from 1994-2004 and directly contributed to studies on the biological effects of millimeter waves and high peak power pulses. Dr. Murphy became the Scientific Director, Directed Energy Bioeffects Division, where he championed the importance of bioeffects research for supporting military applications of directed energy and non-lethal weapons. His work enabled weapons design, optimal safe Test and Evaluation, threat assessment, exposure standards, medical preparedness, protection, and policy decisions. It was through his efforts that the US Air Force is recognized internationally as a world-class center for radio frequency radiation health and safety research and dosimetry; he emphasized the critical importance of research quality and science-based decisions…

†Der Goldhamster by Rolf Gattermann, Peter Fritzsche and Karsten Neumann. VerlagsKG Wolf. 2019

Fritzsche P, Neumann K, Nasdal K, Gattermann R. 2006. Differences in reproductive success between laboratory and wild-derived golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) as a consequence of inbreeding. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 60, 220-226.

Gattermann R, Fritzsche P, Neumann K, Al-Hussein I, Kayser A., Abiad M, Yakti R. 2001. Notes on the current distribution and the ecology of wild golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus). Journal of Zoology 254, 359-365.

Larimer SC, Fritzsche P, Song Z, Johnston J, Neumann K,  Gattermann R,  McPhee ME, Johnston RE. 2011. Foraging behavior of golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) in the wild. Journal of Ethology DOI: 10.1007/s10164-010-0255-8

Gattermann R, Fritzsche P, Weinandy R, Neumann K. 2002. Comparative studies of body mass, body measurements and organ weights of wild-derived and laboratory golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus). Laboratory Animals 36, 445-454

Gattermann R, Johnston RE, Yigit N, Fritzsche P, Larimer S, Ozkurt S, Neumann K, Song Z, 

Colak E, Johnston J, McPhee ME. 2008. Golden hamsters are nocturnal in captivity but diurnal in nature. Biology Letters 4, 253-255.

Murphy, M.R. 1985. History of the capture and domestication of the Syrian Golden Hamster (Mesocricetus auratus Waterhouse). In, The Hamster. Reproduction and Behavior. Edited by HI Siegel. New York: Plenum Press.