In 1930 Mr. I. Aharoni, a professor of the Department of zoology, Hebrew university, Jerusalem, decided to explore and animal Burrell near Syria.  At the end of the 8 foot tunnel he came upon a mother with her 12 young.  These were the first golden hamsters to be found alive in nearly a century.  The professor took his find back to the HebrewUniversity.  Some of the young died during the journey and soon after their arrival.  Finally only one male and two females survived.  Four months later, one of the two females gave birth to a litter, the first to be born in captivity.

In 1931, 2 pairs of descendents of these hamsters were sent to England where they were found to be valuable laboratory animals.  In 1938, golden hamsters arrive for the first time in the United States at the public health service in Carville, Louisiana.  It is estimated that in this country alone in 1950, the level off point of their popularity, they numbered 100,000.  All of them descended from the family of hamsters that the professor found in Syria.