Sexing Dwarf Hamsters

So, you’ve just bought your first dwarf hamster.  And what’s his name?
Henry!  Let me see the little guy . . .

Uh!  You may want to call your new pet “Henrietta.”

Don’t be embarrassed.  Lots of people have a problem distinguishing the sexes of their dwarf hamster.  The real “problem” occurs because the hamsters themselves have absolutely no problem telling the boys from the girls.

Why is sexing dwarf hamsters important?
The reason it’s important to know if your dwarf hamster is a boy or a girl is so that you can properly separate the boys and the girls.  Dwarf hamsters are very promiscuous animals and if you have a boy and girl in the same cage together, you will wind up with unwanted actions happening in your dwarf hamster home (and a lot of it).  You may even end up with an entire family of dwarf hamsters, and unplanned breeding is never a good idea.  At this point, if you still haven’t corrected your past error, you’re new family of dwarf hamsters are going to start inbreeding!  So being able to tell the boys from the girls is something you will have to learn sooner or later and sooner is always better than later.

How to go about sexing dwarf hamsters
So how do you tell the boys from the girls in the dwarf hamster set?  Well, since you’re not one of the species themselves, it may take a little while. But it’s not that difficult.  You can go about it in several different ways, in fact.

Each of these techniques, by the way, rely strictly on observation – so they all have some level of probability built into it.

First, pick up your new pet so you can see his stomach and his genitalia . . . yes, this is crucial!  You’ll know right off if you have a female, because her stomach will have the mammary glands – nipples that are for feeding her young.  If you can’t really tell – and sometimes you can’t – there are still several other methods you can use to solve this embarrassing dilemma.

You can always double check by examining the animal’s genitalia. Males of course will have testicles.  Then check further – because the animal is so small these methods are sometimes less than foolproof – to see, quite frankly, what some people refer to as “urine holes.” Between the vaginal and urinary openings and the anus.

Technically speaking the space between these “urine holes” is called the anogenital distance.  This specifically refers to the distance between the genital openings and the anus.  In the male in the male it would be the distance between the penile opening and the anus. In the females, you’re looking at the distance between the vaginal and urinary openings.

If your new hamster is a male, these orifices are spaced much farther apart (relatively speaking on an animal that is four inches long at most!) than the females’.

Of course, eventually you’ll get your “diagnosis” confirmed by a veterinarian, who by the way may have just as much difficulty detected his sex as you!

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