New PAH Gerbil - Male or Female?

[jerbilessence]

Yesterday we went to PAH to find a male friend for our young lone male rescue gerbil, Ollie. We chose a lovely little black 'male', but as he looked female to me, I asked them to double check the sex. Two of the four gerbils in the cage definitely looked male, and I just wasn't sure about the two smaller ones. The PAH girl insisted that they only keep single sexes together, and also got the store manager to check as well. Store manager said he was definitely male.  We haven't split caged him with Ollie yet and still have our doubts, so would appreciate an expert opinion.

[img src="i173.photobucket.com/albums/w80/Josie_Knox/image.jpg1_zps27r0slgg.jpg" alt="" src="" style="max-width:100%;"]

[crittercrazy]

Definitely a good idea to double check!
However, does look like a male to me. I'm not 100% positive (and my opinion is not that of an expert. ) though so I would still wait for some other replies as well. I have a hard time sexing dark colored gerbils for some reason.

[rilence]

That look very male to me

[Shooting Star]

I'm not convinced-- I *think* I see the female papilla-vagina-anus configuration. But I can't say 100% either! Can you get more pictures?

[jerbilessence]

Thanks all for your comments - it seems his/her sex is still debatable Does this photo help?

[Shooting Star]

Yep, definitely female.

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[jerbilessence]

Thank you so much, Shooting Star! Really appreciate your feedback. Unfortunately this means that we will be returning her to PAH tonight as we already have 8 females and don't have room to set up another cage . I will check the other three gerbils in the PAH cage to see if there's another female that she can go back with. She's young (about 6-7 weeks, I think) and only been separated from the group since Sunday late afternoon - do you think she could be combined with a previous litter mate without split caging, if there is another female in the group?  And unlikely to be pregnant at that age?  Though I did see the males in the group chasing her and mounting her.  Oh, what a dilemma!

[crittercrazy]

At that age, should be pretty easy to put them together without split caging. And I'm pretty sure that's too young to be pregnant. That's strange that the males would be mounting though. . . are you sure she's only 6-7 weeks?
Shooting Star will know than me on all of that.

[jerbilessence]

All is well now. We took her back to PAH and explained she was a girl. They insisted that they only keep single sex groups, so we checked again the other three gerbils and confirmed that they were in fact ALL girls, so thankfully no risk of her being pregnant.  The mounting I saw before must have just been female dominance. When we put our girl back with the group, fighting broke out first with one gerbil (proper rolling in a ball fighting) and then with another gerbil but when these two were removed from the cage, she settled nicely with the remaining girl. PAH were fine to keep them as two separate pairs.

PAH were very apologetic about getting the sexes wrong, refunded our money and then gave us a gift card for £10 to get a male gerbil when they get some in. I suggested that they should ensure their suppliers inform them of the sexes of the gerbils on the delivery paperwork as apparently they don't do this at the moment. 

Anyway, lesson learnt for me is to stick to my guns if I believe the sex of a gerbil is different to what I'm told by 4 different PAH employees including the store manager 

[betty]

Nice work.

Glad to hear all is well with the remaining gerbils in the store too.