If You Have Any Questions Email Me At [email protected] My Pet Mongolian Gerbil.

This is a good web page about  Mongolian gerbils. 

Pitchers Of Black Beauty

This is a photo of my Mongolian gerbil. Her name is Black Beauty, she is only 27 days old, she is still being weaned. She loves her house! I'm paining  to  add more tubes this summer.

 Food: I use Forti - Diet  for her because she is still a baby, I will use it until the bag gets low then I will add some of the regular gerbil food until I run out of the other food.

 Bedding: I recommend Kaytel, because it doesn't have aromatic oils. (NEVER USE CEDAR OR PINE BECAUSE OF THE OILS & IT WILL KILL YOUR  GERBIL!!!)  Put the bedding in about 2 to 3 inches so it can dig barrows.

 How can I tame my Mongolian gerbils?   You can use the natural curiosity of Mongolian gerbils to tame them. They usually flee when there happens something unusually, but a brave gerbil will come back to take a look, due to its curiosity. You can them get used to you, by introducing your hand (with or without treats on it) in their cage. The gerbils will come to take a look. Let them sniff, and it is not unusual to get a gentle nip as they explore and examine your hand. They're trying to "taste" you, and find out if your edible. Don't jerk your hand away, move it back slowly. Give them a quick puff of air in the face. Don't catch them immediately or pick them up, because they will be frightened and you will lose their trust.

When they are used to your hand and its smell, the next step is to let them sit and let them eat some treats, such as sunflower seeds, on your hand. When your gerbils are used to sit on your hand, you can slowly raise your hand a few centimeters with the gerbil on it, and then slowly lower it back down again. You can every time you'll do this raise your hand a little bit higher. This way your gerbils will lose their fear for you and other humans. Never chase your gerbils, and never catch them from above, because this is the way their natural predators. Such as birds of prey, will catch them.

NEVER catch a Mongolian gerbil at their tail! When it is necessary ONLY at the base of their tail. Your gerbil can lose its tail when you'll grab their tail and the gerbil want to go away. They can lose their tail very easily. You will have only the tails' skin in your hand and the vertebra of the tail will stay at the gerbil. These vertebras will die off very quickly. Your gerbil won't have a tail anymore and it shall never grow back, but they will survive and it will heal very quickly. The loss of their tail is a defense mechanism for your Mongolian gerbil, so they can escape from a predator when these enemies have caught them at their tail. So you need to scoop them with your hands when you want to hold them. You can also let them climb on your hand or grab their body calmly with your full hand. Never give up, because it can take a while before your gerbil will be tame. Have patience!

Furnishings: A cage with only some bedding material is too boring for Mongolian gerbils. Your gerbils need a nesting box that provides a nice place to sleep, hide, and find some privacy. You van make one yourself from wood or for example a flowerpot upside down with a hole in it. Be sure that it doesn't have any sharp edges before you give it to your gerbils. You can also buy a commercial one at a pet store, made from stone, wood, and straw. A plastic nesting box is not recommended, since the gerbils would gnaw it in pieces within a week. Cardboard boxes can also be used, but these are also disappeared very fast, as a gnawing toy they are very suitable. Remember that everything made of wood, cardboard, or plastic will be gnawed into pieces sooner or later. Gerbils (and their owners) can also have a lot of fun with toilet paper rolls; they will be gnawed into pieces in no-time. Another thing you can do is making artificial holes made off stones piled on each other. Be always careful and be sure that it cannot collapse. When your gerbils won't have sand as bedding you need to give them a dish with sand so they can take a sand bath. Freakish branches are great for gerbils, because they can gnaw at these branches and climb on it. In pet shops you can buy all kind of climbing attributes. The opinions about the use of an exercise wheel are different. Some gerbils love their wheel, but others will have nothing to do with the wheel. It can be denied that it is good for their exercise. My Mongolian gerbils don't use their wheel to exercise. They did only use it for climbing on it and to gnaw at. If you still want to purchase a wheel, be sure that purchase a safe solid wheel or simply tape if over with duct tape and it's fine. This prevents that the tail of your gerbil will be broken or even amputated, because tails can get caught in uncovered wheels with open spaces between the bars. Tails of Mongolian gerbil will lose their tail very easily as you probably know, this is a defense method to escape from predators in the wild.

Appearance: Mongolian gerbils are small rodents. Without a tail have a length of 110-135 mm. The bushy tail has a length of 95-105 mm. Mongolian gerbils have a weight of 60-85 gram and with overweight they can weigh 120 gram. The males are 10-20% heavier than the females. In the wild there isn't a difference in the weight between the males and the females, both weight in the wild about 60 gram. The gerbil's body is slender, and its skin is quit tight. The head of a Mongolian gerbil is short and broad, with a pointed nose. The hind legs have a length of 28-32 mm, so we can say that they are quit long. Because of these long hind legs the Mongolian gerbil can jump very well and easily stand upright. Mongolian gerbils can jump as far as 1 meter and 50 cm high. The front legs are much smaller. Another characteristic is that the upper incisors of the gerbil have a narrow groove at their anterior surface. Mongolian gerbils have a long, hairy tail with a tuft at the end. The original color of the Mongolian gerbil (see right-hand picture) is what we call agouti. The dorsal hairs have a gray base, a yellow center band and black tips. The belly and paws are beige or white. Their claws are dark brown or black. The foot soles are hairy too, with the exception of a small spot. Their fur should have a silky shine. An oil-like substance, excreted by a gland at the gerbil's belly, causes this shine. Both sexes have such gland called the Hadrian gland. They can spread their odor to objects or to each other by rubbing against it. In this way they spread a substance, which contains pheromones. Pheromones are smell hormones, giving each gerbil its own unique odor. Because Mongolian gerbils are already kept as pets for a while, there are bred already many different colors. Many different hair colors have appeared and sometimes their belly has the same color as their back, like black gerbils have. So the belly is always beige or white, or has the same color of the back. Nowadays there are many colors available, such as black, dark eyed honey, dove, slate, spotted, Siamese, argent golden, etc.

Gnawing. Gnawing seems to be very important to Mongolian gerbils. They don't just enjoy it, but is also a vital necessity. A Mongolian gerbil has 4 incisors that keep growing as long as the gerbil keeps living. So Mongolian gerbils need to keep their teeth short by gnawing on things. When they won't gnaw enough the teeth can grow into their upper jaw. A gerbil with overgrown teeth can't eat anymore and will eventually die without treatment. You need to take care of enough gnawing material, such as hay, cardboard boxes, branches, toilet pare rolls, etc. You can also buy some gnawing stones in pet shops. Another type of gnawing behavior occurs, when gerbils are kept in small cages. It seems to be a sign of desperation or boredom, when the gerbils spend a lot of time on gnawing on the cage bars. 

Digging. Mongolian gerbils are born to dig. When you give your gerbils a thick layer of bedding material your gerbils will spend much time digging and they love it. It is dependent of the bedding material you use if they start digging tunnels. You can make artificial tunnels of piled stones, wood, etc. Your gerbils will dig them out with much pleasure after you have covered them with the bedding material. Be careful that these tunnels cannot collapse. 

Compulsive eve digging. Anyone who keeps Mongolian gerbils knows the problem: the gerbils constantly dig in the corners of their cage. This is not just normal digging behavior, because of its characteristic it can be described as so-called stereotyped digging. There is a simple method that can prevent gerbils from developing this behavior. Many people hypothesized that this behavior was influenced by a too small cage size. Christopher Wiedenmayer, a Swiss psychologist, has proven with experiments that this is not the case. Stereotyped digging behavior was not affected by cage size. The result of his further experiments is quite simple: if gerbils grow up in an environment with a "burrow" they won't develop stereotyped digging behavior. The essential fact is that the "burrow" must have a tunnel and a chamber connected to it. When the gerbils were only given a shelter without a tunnel, stereotyped digging occurred. All gerbils in his experiments that grew up in a setting with an artificial burrow, a tunnel connected to a chamber, didn't show stereotypes. Vera Brakeman has tried this with one of her gerbil families with an large aquarium, and with 2/3 of the cage filled with wood shavings mixed with hay and some cardboard tubes, so the gerbils were able to dig tunnels and chambers that won't collapse. Her gerbils built up a nice burrow system that changed from day to day. The results of her experiment were indeed that the gerbils that were born in a burrow didn't develop stereotyped digging behavior. When placed in a cage without a "burrow" they started digging in the corners, but after returning in a cage with a burrow they stopped digging in the corners and never showed any stereotyped digging behavior. Gerbils that haven't grown up in a burrow will always dig in the corners, but when given a burrow they did do this less. So we can conclude that if you keep your gerbils from birth in a cage with an artificial burrow (a tunnel connected to a chamber) or when you give them the chance to dig their own burrow, your gerbils won't develop stereotyped digging behavior.

Sand bathing. Mongolian gerbils like to take a sand bath. They love it. Mongolian gerbils have started to bath in the sand, because it is hard or impossible to find any water in deserts. They use the sand to keep their fur grease-free. A greasy coat won't isolate enough. You can give your gerbil fine sand to bath in.

Marking. Mongolian gerbils have at their belly a small patch of bearskin just above their navel; this is their scent gland. The male will regularly make the cage and the furnishings by rubbing their stomach or mounting the object or other gerbil. The scent is used to recognise the members of their group and to mark their territory. The oily secretion that this gland produces isn't almost undetectable for us. We can't smell it, and that's why gerbils don't smell. Both males and females have a scent gland, but the one of the female is much smaller.

Hierarchy. With a group of Mongolian gerbils there is always one dominant pair. Only this pair will get pups, the other members of the group won't. The dominant male shall not try to mate with the other females, because of the simple fact that they don't have a cycle; they don't go into heat as long as the dominant female is present. The other males in the group will try to mate with the dominant female, but the dominant male mostly prevents that. This dominant male is also the one that maintains the hierarchy in the group. When the dominant male dies or becomes weaker, the strongest male of the other gerbils will become the new dominant male. With females is it the same.

Communication. Mongolian gerbils can't talk like humans do, but this doesn't mean that they can't communicate. The can make clear what their feeling and their purpose is by non-verbal communication. Below here you will find some non-verbal communication methods. Mongolian gerbils keep almost al the time in touch with each other by high squeaking sounds that we almost can't hear. Very young gerbils make louder sounds that we can hear much better. When an adult gerbil makes a larger sound it can mean that they are playing, but it can also means that they are afraid or by sexual excitement.

Thump ing . A typical characteristic of the Mongolian gerbils is thumping. Mongolian gerbils will make a rhythmic thumping sound with their hind legs because of two reasons. One reason is to alert other gerbils in the group when there is danger, and the other reason is when they are sexual excited. It is amazing how loud and how long they can thump. We can't hear the difference between thumping by danger or by sexual excitement, but the gerbils can hear the difference very well. When a gerbils starts to thump by danger, all other gerbil run immediately for cover and in a flush all gerbils vanish into their burrow or other hiding place. Mostly the other gerbils start to thump also. When a gerbil thumps by sexual excitement, the other gerbil will mostly ignore it. When you have more cages it is nice to see when one gerbil starts to thump, the gerbils in all cages will be alert and start also to thump. The pups often imitate the thumping of their parents, even when there is no danger. You can also drum with your finger; the gerbils will often start to thump back.

Body language.

Body language is the most important way of communication by Mongolian gerbils. Below here you will find a short summary of different kind of body language by Mongolian gerbils.