Saw seven wild hamsters today, which is not too bad :)

[jubalbarca@scholar.social]

Saw seven wild hamsters today, which is not too bad

#Wildlife #Cute #Animal #Nature #Wien

[cleoqc@cosocial.ca]

@JubalBarca
Wild hamsters?? Where are you??

[sandersch@mastodon.online]

@JubalBarca we call them korenwolf in the Netherlands.
They are very rare over here and are protected.

[jubalbarca@scholar.social]

@sandersch Aye, they're rare everywhere - the European species is critically endangered internationally.

[jubalbarca@scholar.social]

@CleoQc Vienna, Austria

These are European Field Hamsters, a different species to the Dwarf and Syrian ones that were domesticated into pet hamsters (and these are much larger than a pet hamster too). Sadly they're also now critically endangered with a very real risk of extinction within the next 20 years, but some of the old Vienna cemeteries are among the best places to see them.

[vicorva@mastodon.art]

@JubalBarca it sounds pretty fantastic, tbh! Yay, wild hamsters!

[jubalbarca@scholar.social]

@vicorva On a personal perspective any number of wild hamsters is definitely nice! But the population in the cemetery I think isn't as strong as it was a few years ago: I think if they were in the numbers we had in 2020-ish I'd probably be seeing more like twice that number on an hour or so's walk around the place. Hopefully they'll recover alright, but as an endangered species the population is a bit fragile.

[masp@wandering.shop]

@JubalBarca @vicorva I feel that wild hamsters can only exist because some time in the distant past some pet hamsters escaped captivity and started breeding in the wild.

[jubalbarca@scholar.social]

@masp @vicorva Yeah there are some animals where we're used to think about them being domesticated and having a wild counterpart (esp eg dogs, maybe sheep) and some where it feels super odd if you're not used to the actual wild animal (hamsters, but I think chickens come into a similar category).

This species are very visibly not pet hamsters though in that they're a lot lot chonkier, the biggest ones are closer to a guinea pig than the size you'd expect a pet hamster to be!