Abstract
Breeding of golden hamsters is classically performed at thermal conditions ranging from 20 to 24 °C. However, growing evidence suggests that lactating females suffer from heat stress. We hypothesised that shaving females dorsally to maximise heat dissipation may reduce stress during reproduction. We thus compared faecal cortisol metabolites (FCM) from shaved golden hamster mothers with those from unshaved controls. We observed significantly lower FCM levels in the shaved mothers (F1,22 = 8.69, p = 0.0075) pointing to lower stress due to ameliorated heat dissipation over the body surface. In addition, we observed 0.4 °C lower mean subcutaneous body temperatures in the shaved females, although this effect did not reach significance (F1,22 = 1.86, p = 0.18). Our results suggest that golden hamsters having body masses being more than four times that of laboratory mice provide a very interesting model to study aspects of lactation and heat production at the same time.
Highlights
Breeding of golden hamsters is classically performed at thermal conditions ranging from 20 to 24 °C
Does shaving affect faecal cortisol metabolites (FCM) levels during lactation? Golden hamsters are substantially bigger than mice and have altered heat loss over the body surface
Our study shows that lactating unshaved golden hamsters had 0.4 °C higher subcutaneous body temperatures than shaved hamsters the effect did not reach significance in our study presumably caused by the small effect and sample sizes
Summary
Breeding of golden hamsters is classically performed at thermal conditions ranging from 20 to 24 °C. We observed significantly lower FCM levels in the shaved mothers (F1,22 = 8.69, p = 0.0075) pointing to lower stress due to ameliorated heat dissipation over the body surface. Golden hamsters are tolerant towards high temperatures and have a remarkable reproductive potential Their gestation period is the shortest known from placental mammals and only amounts to 16–18 days with very large litter sizes, ranging from 2 to 15 pups with a mean of 7.8 pups (Ohrnberger et al 2016). We measured faecal cortisol metabolites (FCM) noninvasively in lactating laboratory golden hamsters exposed to ad libitum feeding and raising naturally born (unmanipulated) litters to find out whether facilitated heat dissipation reduces stress in the mothers. Long-term elevated stress levels are known to affect the whole organism starting from increased blood glucose concentrations, altered behavioural patterns, and inhibited growth up until affecting fertility and modulating the immune system (Romero and Butler 2007)
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