A Foodie with a Fiery Temper: Zoologist Mykhailo Rusin About the European Hamster

What comes to mind when you think about a wild hamster? If you just imagined a Syrian hamster, which is often kept as a pet, you might get the wrong impression about its Ukrainian relative. It is a real giant among rodents, as the largest ones weigh more than a kilogram!

The European, black-bellied hamster, or common hamster, is a true fighter for a place in the sun. It will desperately chase away anyone who tries to cross its borders. However, the European hamster, despite its fiery character, is under the threat of extinction. It is marked by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species as an endangered species.

The European hamster is fond of Ukrainian gardens, so many people think of it as a dangerous pest. “According to my estimate, more than a thousand hamsters are getting exterminated in Ukraine every year,” says zoologist Mykhailo Rusin. “Sometimes a video of a wild hamster will pop up on YouTube or TikTok. Half of the comments under it are something like ‘What a cutie’, and the other half: ‘This pest must be killed immediately’. When we write that it is a Red Data Book animal, the response is usually: ‘Then come and get your precious hamster out of my garden!’” That’s exactly what Mykhailo once did and founded the Hamster Rescue Center.

The team of experts actually catches wild hamsters in the area, provides them with medical treatment, and releases them into the wild. This initiative earned Mykhailo a special award at the 2024 Animal Protection Award by UAnimals.

Ready to throw hands

Does the European hamster have the behavioral features that other animals do not?

Yes, a defense stance. If a hamster is threatened by a person or animal, it stands on its hind legs and jumps at the perpetrator, trying to drive it away. This is a very characteristic behavior.

The hamster is a greedy animal. This is an adaptation technique to life in nature. It gathers food and stuffs it behind its cheeks, then brings it to the burrow and hits its cheeks, knocking it all out. When a hamster runs with stuffed cheeks, they are wider than its body. You know, it looks like a hammerhead shark with those big cheeks.

What does a wild hamster do during the day?

Hamsters can come out of their burrows during the day, but the main period of their activity is nighttime. Then the hamster gathers food and brings it into its burrow, into a special pantry. It eats plants, but it can also eat insects, even small mice or eggs of small birds.

By the way, the hamster never crawls into the soil, eating potatoes or carrots. This is done by completely different species.

What does the European hamster do in winter time?

Normally, it sleeps. It goes through a true hibernation. The body temperature drops to 8 degrees Celsius, and the heart slows down to one beat per minute. Like all species that are inactive in winter, the hamster puts on weight in the fall. It eats a lot to store fat. It also stores food in the pantry so that it has something to eat when it wakes up.

Aggressive dating strategy 

How do wild hamsters interact with each other?

They are true loners and do not form families. The male and female live separately, and they often beat and bite each other with their paws. A female can even kill a male — this frequently happens during mating. Although males are usually bigger, females are more aggressive and fight harder.

During their stay in our center, we always put them separately to prevent fights. If they are kept in groups, there is a high chance that only one will survive.

How do they react to other species?

Wild hamsters do not run from a fight. They get into their defense stance and start jumping to defend or attack. Sometimes, a hamster tries to chase away a dog or a cat in this way. Despite this, cats often kill hamsters, and this is a big problem.

Why do wild hamsters disappear? 

We have already mentioned that the wild hamster is endangered. How critical is the situation?

It is predicted that by 2050, hamsters as a species will simply disappear. This is based on a mathematical model built on birth and death rates. The hamster is a species that produces a lot of offspring. Under ideal conditions, a female is able to give birth to babies three times a year, and each litter can contain 6, 8, or even 10 hamsters.

This used to be the case, but in the last decade, litters have been produced only once a year. The number of babies in a litter is also decreasing.

In nature, the hamster does not care much about its offspring. The female usually leaves the young in about a month. At the same time, they have a high mortality rate, primarily due to predators.

If the modeled trend continues, scientists predict that the species may disappear completely.

Why is life getting worse for the wild hamster?

The climate is warming up, and winters are now less stable. Previously, the European hamster used to hibernate in November and sleep until March. Now it’s snowing, and on New Year’s Eve it’s raining, and then it’s snowing again… And the hamster goes to sleep and wakes up.

This is a very high energy expenditure. If the hamster is constantly in this change, the animal is exhausted. European hamsters often die during the thaw.

Wild hamsters are also threatened by many pesticides in the fields. The decline of small-scale farming also plays a role here. This is very important, as hamsters have always had plenty of high-calorie food in small gardens. Now, however, they are increasingly finding themselves in huge fields planted with a single crop. This is what the animal has to eat. However, according to research by French scientists, a mono-diet worsens a hamster’s health.

Do military actions affect hamsters?

I suppose so. There was a population of European hamsters northeast of Kharkiv. And it was through the area where the hamsters lived that the offensive took place in 2022. Everything there was dug up. There were trenches everywhere, and they became traps for animals.

The main thing is the human factor. Sometimes I see someone urging people to keep European hamsters at home. Such suggestions are criminal. Ukrainian laws prohibit keeping Red Data Book species at home.

Sometimes someone either buys European hamsters or offers to pay people for them at the center. This is such a shock to me! Red Book animals and plants should not be sold, ever, and to anyone.

I’ll just have a bite —the hamster’s motto

Why do hamsters go from the meadows to vegetable gardens?

They come there to eat. This creates a dangerous trap. On the one hand, hamsters like the fact that there is a lot of varied and tasty food there. On the other hand, people want to get rid of them, kill them, because they consider them pests. Moreover, cats and dogs also try to catch them. The Hamster Rescue Center exists to safely remove the European hamster from the human area.

Hamsters love berries, fruits, and vegetables. In the garden, they nibble on the vegetable and are not interested in the stem. They like to bite into sugar beets. They especially like strawberries. The wild hamster does not eat one strawberry completely but runs around and bites a piece off many berries. Sometimes it does it also with beets, zucchini, and cucumbers.

Once in the Rivne region, people saw a hamster and told us about it. They said that it didn’t really bother them. Until they saw how many strawberries had bite marks! We caught the hamster and relocated it.

Can it make a hole right in the garden?

Yes, but this is more common in places where people don’t walk much or where the yard is neglected. For example, elderly owners can’t weed out all the wild plants, and somewhere under a pear tree a hamster digs a hole. Or sometimes it looks for a place under a shed or under an outdoor toilet.

It’s quite easy to distinguish a European hamster’s burrow, but it takes some experience. Usually, it is a large hole. Often an entire arm can go into it. The tunnel goes either vertically downward or at a 45-degree angle. If it is a hole for winter, the depth is up to two meters. There may also be a mound, especially in early spring. If the hamster hibernates there, it clears the hole and takes out the soil. 

Note that hamsters never make surface horizontal passages. Those mean that moles or voles have been at work. Or even blind mole-rats, especially if it’s eastern or southern Ukraine.

How do people usually treat wild hamsters?

A woman from Kharkiv contacted us and asked what she should plant in her garden so that hamsters could live there! It seems that her neighbors had wild hamsters. She asked, “How can I make it so that I have more wild hamsters than them?” We agreed that she would grow alfalfa in half of her garden because wild hamsters love it. This story makes me quite happy.

The point is not in saving a few dozen hamsters from gardens but in gradually changing people’s attitudes towards animals. We want to move in the direction of having people treat them with more compassion.

From the garden into the wild

Let’s imagine that I see tiny bites on vegetables and realize I have a hamster in my garden. What should I do?

I would ask you to provide some proof. Show us a photo of the animal or a video on your phone. Sometimes people manage to film the hamster. But if a person has just seen a wild hamster and can adequately describe it, then we believe them.

If we find out that it is indeed a European hamster, we first persuade people not to kill it. And then we can go to their place. There we will try to catch the animal and release it somewhere away from people.

How can you catch a wild hamster?

It doesn’t look like an action movie. The hamster is nocturnal, so what do you do? Run around at night with night vision goggles? The hamster runs, and you chase it? It does not work like that. In the daytime, we inspect the area, find traces of vital activity, and then set up special live traps. If there are burrows, we set them near the burrows.

We put bait inside. The wild hamster does not miss anything tasty, and it will definitely get in there.

People without experience should not do this, even if they have good intentions. Hamsters can die. We have never had this happen because we are professionals.

There are all sorts of methods people use, like pouring water over the holes, but it’s just cruel.

Do you immediately put them in a box and take them away from people?

We transport them in a trap, as it serves like a cage. We try to release them where there are already wild hamsters so that the animal can find a mate. But we don’t do a “hard release”, when you just open the cage door, kick it under the butt, and move on! It may look good on video, as the animal runs beautifully away from the cage. However, this method cannot be used with a hamster.

If you release a bison or a wild boar, you just open the door for it and it goes away. No one can do anything to it. But literally everyone wants to kill or eat a hamster: birds of prey, ferrets, cats. In the new territory, the hamster is disoriented. We need to give it at least a minimal shelter so that it stays a little longer at the release site.

We make a hole about half a meter to a meter deep, put the hamster in it, put food in it, and cover the hole with something heavy. Recently, we have been using paving slabs that can be bought at a hardware store. We put a small supply of food inside, such as apples, carrots, and some grain.

Within a day, the wild hamster digs its way out and begins to explore the territory. In this way, we give the animal a chance to gain a foothold in a new area, as it will immediately have a shelter. Otherwise, it will simply run away, and all the work we have done will be in vain.

The Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Center for Rare Species in Kyiv Zoo is also trying to increase the population of the European hamster. Here, we breed hamsters according to a special program and then release them into the wild. The program has been in place since 2019.

Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Center for Rare Species 

How many wild hamsters live there now?

About 30. At first there were a few captured ones. Now there are only one or two hamsters from the wild there; all the rest were born in captivity.

Do you distinguish them somehow?

They are completely different. There are phlegmatic, calm ones, and very aggressive, even hysterical ones. The males try to spend as little energy as possible, you know, there are some lazy, fat males. Females are smaller and more anxious. Although there are also calm females and very aggressive males. One male bit me many times when I was examining him or weighing him.

Weren’t you wearing gloves?

They bite through any gloves! Their teeth are so sharp that they can even pierce special Kevlar animal handling gloves.

Aren’t you afraid to take them?

I am. Those incisors penetrate very deeply. There is a technique for taking wild hamsters as safely as possible. And even then, it happens that you can’t avoid being bitten. This is a problem when you work with animals: There is always a danger that you will be bitten or scratched. That’s why we don’t allow anyone to handle wild animals, except for those people who have been trained and instructed on that.

Where do hamsters from the Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Center for Rare Species end up?

We release them in the Tarutyns’kyj steppe in the Odesa region in cooperation with the organization Rewilding Ukraine. We have built enclosures for adaptation there.

Last year, we released a little over 20 animals into the wild. This year we will continue. We plan to release 50 hamsters into the steppe.