Fun with Science Club®


			Hamsters smell each other apart. Carrie Straight 05.03.01 Humans use faces, hair color, eye color, weight, and height to tell each other apart. Scientists wanted to know how hamsters could tell each other apart. What would hamsters use to tell each other apart? Bob Johnston and Paula Jernigan knew that a golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) could recognize another golden hamster by smell, but could they tell “Sally”, the hamster, from “Mary”, the hamster. To do this Drs. Johnston and Jernigan did an experiment. They took two female hamsters and put them one at a time in a male’s cage. First Sally then Mary spent three minutes in the male’s cage. They spent time for the next three days. The scientists did this to get the male hamster, Jack, used to smelling and being around both Sally and Mary. The scientists “habituated” Jack to Sally and Mary. Jack is now habituated to the smells of both Sally and Mary. Then the scientists put the scents of Sally and Mary onto glass slides by rubbing some oil from a gland onto the slide. Then Sally’s slides were placed into the cage for Jack to check out. This was done to get Jack to become familiar with the gland scent of Sally. The scientists measured the amount of time Jack spent smelling the slide. Hamsters spend more time investigating smells (sniffing) that they are not used to. Then they gave Jack another slide from a different oil gland from both Sally and Mary (at different times). Each gland scent smells different. They then measured the amount of time Jack spent sniffing the slides. Jack had not been exposed to this gland scent before for either Sally or Mary, but he spent more time sniffing the slides from Mary than the ones from Sally. This meant that even though the smell from the 2 different glands smell different to us, there must be something that allows Jack to tell Sally and Mary apart.


			Johnston, Robert E. and Paula Jernigan. 1994. Golden hamsters recognize individuals, not just individual scents. Animal Behaviour 47: 129-136.