Posted on Feb 05, 2009 under Gerbil Care, Gerbil Health |
Odd title for a post, isn’t it? I feel though, that a lot of the time, when myself and other gerbil owners warn people of buying from petshops, we do forget one vital part in it – the borderline mental retardation your gerbils may have.
The gerbil above is Lol, some of you will recognise her from my ‘My gerbils’ page. Her sister is Bonnie, and quite frankly they are a lovely pair, very friendly and happy. Except that they are both originally commercially bred animals, and it seems that Bonnie has a problem.
If she is on heat, or not kept busy by playtime out of the tank, or chewing up cardboard or burrowing, she will attack her sister.
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Posted on Aug 22, 2008 under Gerbil Colours & Genetics |
I find that a lot of gerbil owners are confused to what purpose the white markings on their self (coloured belly) gerbils serve.
Well, they don’t serve a purpose per se, but for breeding they do serve a very useful indicator of what kind of spotting patterns you may get should it be bred to a spotted gerbil. *
* Just to clarify, pale and white gerbils and white bellied gerbils do carry these markings, but because of the white on their paws and bellies, you obviously cannot see them, it’s only because of the coloured belly on ‘aa’ types that you can see them.
The spotting in gerbils is unlike most other species, whose spotting is recessive. Gerbil spotting is called Dominant Spotting because it is dominant!, meaning that if the gene is in the animal, it’s characteristics will always appear in the phenotype (ie what the animal’s physical appearance).
Spotting is odd in gerbils, in that there doesn’t seem to be any equivalent recessive at that loci, a gerbil either has it or doesn’t, so if you breed from a spotted gerbil, on conception the embyro is either spotted or it isn’t.
Dominant spotting causes a very mild form of anaemia in gerbils. Embryos with two copies of the gene (SpSp) tend to die before birth because of very severe anaemia; in some extremely rare occasions, some of these pups have came to full term but are either still-born on birth or die shortly after, although this is exceptionally rare and more often the embryo will die in the womb and is simply reabsorbed and replaced.
Because this usually happens so early in the pregnancy, and gerbils produce more embryos than can implant anyway, the number of pups in the litter is not affected. There is a page going into more detail on this on eGerbil, Spotted gerbil litters, which is worth a read 
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