The German verb for hoarding comes straight from the hamster
Hamsters stuff food into cheek pouches reaching back to their shoulders, sometimes swelling their heads to double or triple normal size, then haul it home to underground larders. The habit is so famous that German turned the animal's name into a verb: hamstern means to hoard. A group of hamsters, fittingly, is called a horde.
Hamsters are rodents of the subfamily Cricetinae, with 19 species in seven genera, and are most closely related to voles and lemmings. The group first appeared about 15 million years ago in the Middle Miocene, probably in central or eastern Europe, and reached eastern Asia roughly 5 million years later. A 2026 analysis concluded that the common ancestor of all living species lived only about 5 to 6 million years ago, somewhere near southeast Europe or West Asia. Sizes vary widely, from dwarf Phodopus species just 5.5 centimetres long to the European hamster at up to 34.
Their senses are lopsided. Hamsters are nearsighted and colourblind, with poor judgment of distance, yet they detect movement constantly, hear and call in the ultrasonic range, and learn familiar sounds, including their owner's voice. Scent glands on their flanks leave trails that mark territory and mates, and mothers can sniff out which pups are their own. Wild hamsters eat seeds, grass and insects; some in the Middle East have been reported hunting insects in packs. Like rabbits, they re-eat some droppings to recover nutrients.
Most species are fiercely solitary, and housing them together can lead to serious fights. They are superb diggers: Syrian hamsters tunnel about 70 centimetres down, building a steep entrance, separate nesting and storage rooms and even a dead-end branch used as a toilet. Laboratory hamsters still dig with gusto given suitable material. Wild Syrian hamsters can drop into short hibernation bouts, usually two or three days, cutting their metabolism to about 5 percent; pets do not. Their daily rhythm is debated, but most researchers class them as crepuscular, active around dusk and dawn.
Breeding is fast. Syrian and Russian dwarf hamsters can reproduce at four to five weeks old. Syrian pregnancies last 16 to 18 days, and litters average about seven pups but can reach 24, the most the uterus can hold. The golden or Syrian hamster remains the best-known pet species, alongside several dwarf types.
Source: Hamster
