Talk:Domestication of the Syrian hamster

Sheik El-Beled
Whatever is the source "Sheik El-Beled" as a name sounds dubious as it means simply "village elder".

Newspaper article needed about Albert F. Marsh
A person named Albert F. Marsh is a key figure in the history of hamster domestication. He gave a newspaper interview in 1949 in the Press-Register according to this source. The person who wrote this Seattle Times article has no other online presence that I can find, and seems to not have written anything else for the Seattle Times besides this hamster article. Neither the Seattle Public Library nor the New York Public Library seem to have copies of the Press Register, and I am not sure how I can get copies from the Mobile Alabama library. I do not have a date for this Marsh interview, but it seems to have been on a 1949 Sunday, because the New York library database description says, "On Sundays, published a combined edition with the Mobile Press, called Mobile press register, Feb. 14, 1932", so on other days, I think the paper is called the "Mobile Press".  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  13:08, 29 December 2015 (UTC) This seems to be the record at the Mobile Alabama Library.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  13:30, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Press Register
 * - I know that you do a lot of research with online newspapers. If it is no trouble, and briefly, could you give me your opinion on the likelihood of me finding all the 1949 Sunday editions of this newspaper in some online database, and which one I might check?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  13:45, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Account from Adler
This is a letter to the editor in a major newspaper written about the capture of the original laboratory hamsters, written by the person who requested their capture.

This might not be available anywhere online right now. I have not seen this article.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  15:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC) Also see -  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  14:46, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Memoir of a Hebrew Zoologist - original in Hebrew, do not know how to get English translation
In this source Murphy draws his account of the capture of hamsters from an English language translation of this book. Murphy says that he got a copy of the original Hebrew edition then had a colleague, M. Devor, translate the chapter about the hamster expedition. He then goes on to recommend the entire chapter, which is disappointing to me because so far as I know he never shared this English translation and no one who does not know Hebrew could read it without having a translation.

I am not aware of any English language translation of this chapter being available anywhere. This means that all information that I have from this book is from the translated quotations in the Murphy source.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  15:52, 29 December 2015 (U|TC)
 * Hebrew Wikisource has the Hebrew version of this at זיכרונות_זואולוג_עברי/האוגר_הזהוב. imported and processed this text. Anyone can use an online translator to get some understanding of this text.   Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:25, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Use of quotations
Wikipedia's guideline on quotations is at Quotations. The issues to balance are the usefulness of quotations to give insight into a subject and to make the Wikipedia article sufficiently informative, as compared with a desire to limit the amount of Non-free content in an article and also to be concise and write in a neutral style.

This article contains quotations, some several sentences long, from scientific texts and the memoir of a historical figure in the history of hamsters. I chose to present these texts because I think they bring useful historical context to the time in which they were written, and because these quotations capture thought at milestones in the history of hamster domestication and make a record of actions which unambiguously influenced the future of hamster domestication. I feel quite fortunate to have these quotations available. It is unusual to capture a record of specific historical events which so certainly had an impact, especially in a field like natural history.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  16:03, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Typos?
 * "...the pouch, though muscular, is think, and the most expect fingers ..." should it say?
 * "...the pouch, though muscular, is thick, and the most expert fingers ..."


 * Alexander and Patrick Russell, The Natural History of Aleppo, page 181 of the 1797 English second edition

I actually came here to say that this is exactly the sort of article WP needs! But then I found the possible typos. Happy new year! 220  of  Borg 04:18, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reading. I checked the source and it should be "thin", not thick, so I am glad you found the error and let me check. The other problem is as you say.
 * Of course I hope that people enjoy this article, and wrote it because I want more compilations of narratives to appear in Wikipedia. I need to check some other sources before going live with this. Happy new year and thanks a lot for your support.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  18:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Oh thin, I didn't think of that possibility. I was being a little facetious about the importance of this article, thought there are a lot of even less ″important″ things that need to be in an encyclopaedia. I tend to do more NPP and current events updates so like, disasters, plane crashes and terrorist attacks. Reminds me that I have at least one large article that I have had as a user draft for 2(!) years. (my third 2016 edit!) 220  of  Borg 05:06, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Image of the Grand Dame
The Murphy text refers to the type specimen of the Syrian hamster as the "grande dame" and says that the author visited her in the British Museum Natural History in the 1980s. Either the collection changed institution or the institution changed names. I wrote to Natural History Museum, London and they told me that the catalog would be in their data portal at data.nhm.ac.uk/. I found no hamster there. I sent an email a year ago, and one after that, and I just sent another one. I want to find the catalog item. Perhaps they also have a photo of the grande dame which this article could host.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  14:31, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

National Hamster Council archives
The National Hamster Council has been in operation in the UK since the 50s. They provide access to their archives. Two articles talk about the domestication of the hamster.

Most of this story is a re-write of the Murphy text. However, there are some differences. I do not know where Henwood got this additional information that they mixed into the Murphy text. He says that in the British Consul to Syria James Skeene retired to England in 1880, and when he returned, he brought hamsters with him from Syria. He says that Skeene's hamster colony bred until 1910 when they all died somehow. Mixed with this there is a story that in 1902 Skeene sent a hamster specimen to the Berlin museum and that someone named Zumoffen had captured either just this hamster or maybe all of his hamsters.

The paper also names Leonard Goodwin as receiving hamsters from Adler. It does not give more details, but Goodwin's obituary in the telegraph says more and also says that the Oxford Brookes University Medical Sciences Video Archive has a recording of him talking about how he brought hamsters to England and that pet hamsters are descended from the ones he imported.

The other different information in the paper are some stories about importing wild type breeding stock to the US and UK in the 1980s. While this is interesting I will not summarize those stories here. I think they demonstrate recognition of the history of hamsters and their bottleneck genetics but I cannot untangle the threads of this just now.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  14:54, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I started an article for James Henry Skene.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  15:22, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I also found the Goodwin interview -
 *  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  16:20, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 *  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  16:20, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

This source Says that Hamster Bungalow was Henwood's personal website. If that is true, there is some strangeness, because this article on that website talks about Henwood in third person. There is a hamster history story here. Most of this history is a copy of the Murphy text. Some of the rest is a copy of that Henwood text from the newsletter. I could be mistaken or confused, but I think this also includes other information, not from either text. This is such a casual writing that I do not know if there is some other source around, or if Henwood had other information he did not share in the hamster journal text. The most interesting part here is the mention of four organizations which captured and exported hamsters from Syria on four occasions. The report is that none of these hamsters bred or entered genetic stock. The fact that they tried to get hamsters back to another country is an indication to me that no one else had done this.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  20:55, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Other language sources
German and Japanese people have a reputation for really liking Syrian hamsters. I cannot cite any sources now, but I know that over the years I have seen German language and Japanese language publications which seemed to be telling stories about the history and origin of hamsters. I suspect that somewhere there might be publications in those languages telling the story of how Syrian hamsters came to live in Germany and Japan.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  15:46, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Merge with Syrian hamster?
I have been hesitant to review this article for GA, because I see no compelling reason why this should be separate from the Syrian hamster article. Much of the beginning is simply about the discovery of the species, and the length of the article is artificially bloated by a lot of unnecessary quotes. The rest of the text about its use as a pet and so on would fit neatly in the parent article. FunkMonk (talk) 22:54, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The rationale for it being a separate article is passing WP:N and being more content than could merge without being WP:UNDUE.
 * Is your proposal to copy/paste everything here into Golden_hamster? Right now that is a paragraph. How much history do you think is appropriate there without being undue?
 * I see the pet section as being pre-domestication and not of interest to a general audience, whom I would expect to want contemporary information about Syrian hamsters as pets and not history. Can you say more about where this could go in the other article?
 * I like the quotes and think that they illustrate the narrative in a way that rewriting could not. Is your idea to eliminate them all?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  23:45, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the quotes are the only thing that would keep this from fitting neatly in the article about the species. But even if they are kept separate, the quotes are quite excessive; an article should rarely consist of 1/3 quotes, especially when half of them are from sources which are not old enough to be in the public domain. As for the history/taxonomy section being long, that isn't uncommon for species articles, and without the quotes it wouldn't even be exceptional. See for example something like Ficus macrophylla or Carnaby's black cockatoo. FunkMonk (talk) 23:52, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I would also add that the overuse of quotes boarders on this failing criteria 2d. At any rate I would suggest holding off the GA nomination to the merge situation is sorted. AIRcorn (talk) 20:51, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Let's save the quotation discussion until after the merge discussion resolves. I am in agreement about the quotations - there are about 5 copyrighted quotations, and that should cut to 1 at most. Still let's wait for that until after the merge. I asked about the general plan for the main article at Talk:Golden_hamster.
 * It is hard for me to imagine this article being merged without pushing the main article above the Article size, because even without quotes this article has 10k of prose on a topic that I see as outside the scope general interest.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  13:09, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The thing is, when the quotes are removed, the discovery section will not be out of the ordinary at all when it comes to length, again, see the FA Camas pocket gopher. Even if the two articles were combined now, they would be nowhere near the split-limit. You could also create an article about Syrian hamsters in captivity, where all the related short articles are collected. You would need a summary of them in the main hamster article anyway. FunkMonk (talk) 13:18, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Well we need to make our minds up about this. I'm sorry to have to say it but the quotes are indeed excessive, and more importantly not necessary to tell the story – they can perfectly well be paraphrased or omitted. The remaining text will be a substantial section but not an unreasonably long one. While the article is not completely inviable on its own, there doesn't seem a lot of justification for separating it from the main article, other than the length which with the quotes gone would not be an issue. The domestication of the hamster does not have the same importance as, say, Domestication of the horse, unquestionably a major topic, and nor is there anything like as much to be said about it. Let's cut the quotes (we have !voted 4-0 on this, effectively) and merge these articles. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:57, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Sorry about not being around much for this conversation I instigated and thanks for the suggestions. Here is my proposal: I would be more motivated to start the labor on this the more I thought that my doing so would lead to an outcome that we all expect would satisfy all stated suggestions for improvement. What other ideas does anyone have?  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  14:02, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Limit of one quotation per source, meaning 3 quotations total in the article as it is now. I think the quotations are helpful. I can edit down to one of each, and then if anyone wants more cuts, then the conversation gets deeper and more specific about what is next.
 * 2) I can support a merge. I would immediately split content out again if the merge led to discussions about WP:UNDUE emphasis on domestication and cuts to sourced content. Domestication is a notable concept on its own and this article merits its own article. At the same time, I recognize that short specific articles better serve the reader as parts of longer more general articles.
 * As I stated above, I think a compriomise could be creating a Syrian hamsters in captivity article, wherein you could group most of the info that you split from the parent article (including Syrian hamster breeding, Syrian hamster care, Syrian hamster variations, Laboratory Syrian hamster). The result would be more fully fleshed out, and therefore more appropriate for GAN as well. FunkMonk (talk) 22:13, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Good idea, I'd support that proposal. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:54, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * - It seems you can count on plenty of support for a

Syrian hamsters in captivity article, if you'd withdraw the current article from GAN. I for one am happy to assist. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:56, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I am not sure of the GAN procedure. If it is all the same, could you fail out the article with my agreement that it needs further development? I would sign off on the need for more discussion about how to organize it with other content. I would still like to keep the log of my having submitted the article for review.
 * While I agree on the possibility of merging content I am not ready to merge it as you proposed. Some demographics of readers of this content could be pet owners, breeders, and medical researchers. Generally none of those audiences need to see content targeted to the others unless they click through to request it. Let's talk about a merge outside the context of closing out the GA review.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  11:54, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I am looking at all the articles. I think that making a hamster navbox might be my next step because that would show what articles exist that are relevant. I am not sure about where things go but I am sure that I do not want content deleted.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  12:07, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Ok, I've done that for you. A navbox will make sense if we have a family of articles as suggested by above. I understand your feelings about deletion - it may well not be necessary, but reorganisation certainly is; we should keep our minds open about what content is actually required when it's been moved and reorganised to fit the new article titles: if there are overlaps or if content does not fit, then of course we must resolve those issues, just as we'd have to fill gaps if those become apparent. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:29, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No content, other than copyrighted and otherwise redundant quotes, would have to be deleted. FunkMonk (talk) 13:35, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 10:39, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Saul Adler. Photograph by Werner Braun. Wellcome V0027916.jpg

Leishmaniasis vaccine
I made a new article leishmaniasis vaccine.

Thanks hamsters for your early work on this.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  20:58, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: First Year English Composition 1001
— Assignment last updated by Uhhlea (talk) 18:42, 12 September 2023 (UTC)