#(there are other domesticated hamsters but afaict they were dommesticated later)

[transgenderer]

The domestication of the Syrian hamster began in the late 1700s when naturalists cataloged the Syrian hamster, also known as Mesocricetus auratus or the golden hamster. In 1930 medical researchers captured Syrian hamster breeding stock for animal testing. Further domestication led this animal to become a popular pet.

The Syrian hamster's natural habitat is in a small region of Northwest Syria near the city of Aleppo.[1] It was first described by science in the 1797 second edition of The Natural History of Aleppo, a book written and edited by two Scottish physicians living in Syria.[2] The Syrian hamster was first recognized as a distinct species in 1839.[3] In 1930, a scientist seeking animal subjects for medical research had the first Syrian hamsters captured to become laboratory animals.[4] Scientists bred those hamsters and during the 1930s sent their descendants to various other laboratories around the world.[5] By the late 1940s in the United States, a commercial hamster industry had begun to provide hamsters for laboratory use and at the same time to popularize hamsters as pets.[6] In later years, further expeditions back to Syria captured other hamsters to increase genetic diversity among the populations of hamsters shared among breeders.

Wild Syrian hamsters become tame in a matter of days after being captured and handled by humans.[7] Wild hamsters are quick to adapt to captivity and thrive in a laboratory setting.[7]

Albert Marsh of Mobile, Alabama established the commercial hamster industry in the United States in the 1940s.[30] Marsh first got a hamster when he was gambling and won it in a wager.[24] Somehow he got more hamsters after this one, perhaps from the breeding stock managed by Guy Henry Faget in Carville, Louisiana.[24] At the time, Marsh was a highway engineer but unemployed.[24] After getting his hamsters, he learned to breed them and founded Marsh Enterprises and the Gulf Hamstery, which promoted Syrian hamsters as pets, for laboratory use, and in business schemes.[24] Marsh took advertisements in magazines, comics, and livestock trade journals which praised hamsters as pets and presented the idea that breeding hamsters was a good business investment.[24] In his business, he shipped hamsters to people who would be breeders, then he coordinated the shipment of various breeders' hamsters to other breeders or to laboratories.[24]

Marsh was successful in part because of the professionalism he brought to the art of hamster husbandry. He authored a book, The Hamster Manual, which had a distribution of 80,000 copies by its 6th edition in 1951.[24] In 1946, Marsh began a campaign to legalize the ownership of hamsters in California, which were prohibited. On 10 February 1948, with the help of the governor of Alabama and others, Marsh was successful in convincing the California State Department of Agriculture to designate Syrian hamsters as "normally domesticated animals".[19]

The hamstery business peaked from 1948-1951 then profitability dropped to almost nothing in the early 1950s.[31] The market changed when small hamsteries, most of which started with hamsters from Marsh, became available everywhere and satisfied local demand for pet hamsters.[31] Marsh's Gulf Hamstery closed in the 1950s.[31]

hamsters only became pets in the 40s...