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

were disturbed from sampling on the previous day, while sleeping in the bedding, butbecause of a habit effect PAA-reaction was lower on the second day which resultedin lower corticosteroid values. So it might be better to perform blood sampling withinone day. However, further complications arise due to the dependence of the PAA onchronobiology. When treatments affect the circadian rhythms as it was found(Hauzenberger et al., in preparation), then it would be impossible to relate certainhormone levels to circadian times.Other complications could arise from a shorter duration of catching due to the trainingof the handler. It means that hamsters that were caught later were caught faster.Although it seems to have had no general influence in our analyses, we cannotexclude an effect, since on day 1 hamsters that were caught later had a lower cortisollevel. This could be due to the time of day, or due to a difference in duration ofanaesthesia and total duration of blood sampling.The correlation between the duration of catching and the anaesthesia was probablydue to the level of experience. Furthermore, the equipment for anaesthesia was notworking properly in the first series which might have contributed to the effect ofseries. Since the experiments were done year-round, an effect of the season cannotbe excluded.47