Behaviour of golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) - Vetsuisse ...

top wire. Some hamsters used to climb while pausing during wire gnawing. Theyusually climbed up and down the front side of the wire top but then returned to thesame point and restarted wire gnawing. Outside directed exploratory climbing wasconsidered as the behavioural source of stereotypic wire gnawing in laboratory mice(Würbel et al., 1996).All hamsters used the sand bath for grooming regularly, but not exclusively.Most hamsters used to wallow in the sand. Thus a sand bath seems very importantfor the welfare of golden hamsters, whether housed in small or big cages. Certainly itcan also be recommended for laboratory conditions as a reasonable enrichment,since the sand can be changed along with litter, if necessary.The available free space was used in all cage sizes. Hamsters in big cagesused the whole ground area and the observed duration which they spent in the openspace was longer. They used to walk particularly along the walls, so that trails wereformed. Staying near the walls (called thigmotaxis) is common in rodents and is usedas an index of anxiety (Simon et al., 1994, in mice). Some hamsters built a big cropof litter in the middle of the cage and formed a trail through the middle of it, which leddirectly from the running wheel to the house.Although there was more open space in the big cages and the distancesbetween the locations were longer, so that hamsters could run more, runningduration did not differ significantly among cage sizes. Possibly, hamsters in big cagesran faster, which led to a similar duration of running.The occurrence of thigmotaxis is no argument against big cages. Due to thefact that there were only two possibilities for covering, the house and the space underand behind the running wheel, the hamsters could have been afraid of running in theopen space. But big cages can be enriched more than small cages, so that morepossibilities for covering can be given. Additionally more enrichment may lead to less24