Post by butsam on Mar 23, 2004 10:50:41 GMT -8
My 2 gerbils, Bosco and Finch, appear to be brothers, and as far as I can tell, are in the neighborhood of ~4 months old. I know for sure now that they are relatively young, since they have definitely grown, especially Bosco!
Anyway, one of my gerbils, Bosco, can't stand the plastic ball, and has never understood it. (Ironically, he really loves the wheel...so does Finch, but Finch usually gets burned out in the ball now with his new technique--keep reading.)
Finch started off well in the ball after about a week of putting him in it periodically, and can really haul all over the house. He especially loves rolling around on tile floors like in the kitchen or bathrooms, where he can really get going!
More recently, however, Finch has taken rolling around in his ball to a new extreme. He now seems to play a lot of games with rolling around in the ball! Even his form has changed to make him a world-class ball-rolling expert. Instead of simply "digging" in the ball to make it go (similar to how they "dig" in the wheel to make the wheel go), Finch has found a new extreme and actually *jumps* in the ball and against one side. He is most notably having all 4 feet leave the ground very briefly before reaching near the zenith (topmost part) of the ball and getting it going especially fast. He does this all so quickly, too...jumping at about 1.5 - 2 jumps per second when he really gets moving! All of this amounts to him really hauling, especially when he is on tile!
He now even seems to have made a game of it, starting to understand some of the basic laws of physics. He will see how high a hurdle of books, notebooks, or other obstacles on the floor he can "jump" by using his momentum. If he fails the first time, he will go back further (if possible) and jump as fast as he can toward the obstacle to try and get on top of it for a second time. All of this is extremely entertaining, especially now that he has had about a month in the ball to experiment around and has realized that jumping and giving more distance to build up speed are two of the keys to get over those hurdles!
Has anyone else seen anything like this before? This is really neat stuff...very interesting how Finch has managed to figure all of this out...he's one smart gerbil!
Sam
Anyway, one of my gerbils, Bosco, can't stand the plastic ball, and has never understood it. (Ironically, he really loves the wheel...so does Finch, but Finch usually gets burned out in the ball now with his new technique--keep reading.)
Finch started off well in the ball after about a week of putting him in it periodically, and can really haul all over the house. He especially loves rolling around on tile floors like in the kitchen or bathrooms, where he can really get going!
More recently, however, Finch has taken rolling around in his ball to a new extreme. He now seems to play a lot of games with rolling around in the ball! Even his form has changed to make him a world-class ball-rolling expert. Instead of simply "digging" in the ball to make it go (similar to how they "dig" in the wheel to make the wheel go), Finch has found a new extreme and actually *jumps* in the ball and against one side. He is most notably having all 4 feet leave the ground very briefly before reaching near the zenith (topmost part) of the ball and getting it going especially fast. He does this all so quickly, too...jumping at about 1.5 - 2 jumps per second when he really gets moving! All of this amounts to him really hauling, especially when he is on tile!
He now even seems to have made a game of it, starting to understand some of the basic laws of physics. He will see how high a hurdle of books, notebooks, or other obstacles on the floor he can "jump" by using his momentum. If he fails the first time, he will go back further (if possible) and jump as fast as he can toward the obstacle to try and get on top of it for a second time. All of this is extremely entertaining, especially now that he has had about a month in the ball to experiment around and has realized that jumping and giving more distance to build up speed are two of the keys to get over those hurdles!
Has anyone else seen anything like this before? This is really neat stuff...very interesting how Finch has managed to figure all of this out...he's one smart gerbil!
Sam
. I could not believe she was doing this. I thought "Wow, I have a kamakaze gerbil". Then it hit me....... that's how the top popped off the last time when she got out. They learn so quickly!!