Science: Guinea Pig's Rival

Few laymen have ever heard of the golden hamster—but they are likely to hear of it from now on. Thousands of hamsters are being raised in U.S., British and Canadian laboratories. The furry, golden-brown, short-tailed rodent is a serious rival to the guinea pig.

Laboratoiy workers consider the hamster's laboratory qualifications practically ideal: it is even more susceptible to human diseases than the guinea pig. The gestation period is the shortest known for a mammal—15 days, 21 hours. It begins to mate by its 43rd day, bears its first litter at the age of two months. Thereafter, until the age of one year, when it stops bearing, it can deliver a litter of two to 15 young every month.

The first Syrian hamsters arrived in the U.S. in 1938; now one laboratory alone (the University of Chicago's Hull Biological Laboratories) has a breeding colony of 1,500.

The hamster is slightly smaller than a guinea pig and looks like a toy bear. It eats practically anything: carrots, cabbage, lettuce, peanuts, dog chow, calf meal. It drinks no water, getting all the liquid it needs from leafy vegetables. At mealtimes, it stows all its food in huge pouches in its cheeks; later it empties the pouches and chews at leisure. Its only defects as a laboratory animal: it likes to fight other hamsters, and a hamster, if disturbed during a delivery, may eat her young.