Reply #8: No, not at all [View All]

[Xithras]

They are an endangered species, but there are still wild syrian hamster populations in remote areas. Nobody knows quite how many because they live in an area inhospitable to long term study, but enough have been seen to confirm that they exist.

BTW, it should me mentioned that wild Syrian Hamster populations have apparently been declining for centuries, and that the species may have been heading for extinction anyway due to long term climate change (they evolved when the ME was wetter) and increasing predation. Livestock grazing have led to their eradication in Turkey and Iraq, but their population decline in Syria appears to be 100% natural.

All pet golden hamsters are decended from 3 individuals captured in Syria in the 1930's, and have been inbred and mutated so much over the decades that they have diverged from their wild cousins quite a bit (the way dogs did with wolves), so there's no way to crossbreed them in order to restore the population. There are a lot of other hamster species that survive across Eurasia, but this one appears to be on its way out.