Fancy Russian Dwarf Hamster 101 - Dwarf Hamster Blog

You’ve probably heard or seen the term “fancy russian dwarf hamster” especially if you do your shopping at pet stores like PetSmart. Fancy Russian dwarf hamsters are not a different species of dwarf hamsters. Rather, they are just a marketing term used to described Russian dwarf hamsters (sometimes also referred to as Siberian hamsters) that are not the normal or Agouti color (black-brown with a dark grey stripe) or have different coat-types or patterns. There are only two species of Russian dwarf hamsters — the Campbell’s dwarf hamster and the Winter White dwarf hamster — and they are able to interbreed. A fancy Russian dwarf hamster is usually one of these species (more commonly the Campbell’s dwarf hamster as it comes in more colors) or a hybrid of the two.

Fancy Russian Dwarf Hamster Colors and Patterns

Below are some pictures of different colors of fancy Russian dwarf hamsters. Most of these are Campbell’s dwarf hamsters unless they are specifically referred to as Winter White. However, it is difficult to identify the actual species because of a lot of crossbreeding so some of these hamsters may be hybrids. You probably won’t know for sure unless you got the hamster from a breeder who knows exactly the genetic lines of her stock.

Note: This is not the full list of available “fancy” russian dwarf hamster colors and patterns, for a more complete table but without pictures, see this. Where the owner has labeled a hamster, we’ll use the species provided. Otherwise, it won’t be specified.

Black Dwarf Hamster

Source: this olx.sg sale listing

Opal Campbell’s Dwarf Hamster

Source: Miss Shari on Flickr

Lilac Dwarf Hamster

Source: Miss Shari on Flickr

Pearl Winter White

Source: Wikimedia Commons Jpbarrass at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons