do males, females behave different???

[zeemiller]

ive always had male gerbils as i went on the understanding that females fight when together, what is the main diffference in behaviour between males and femals ? without picking one up can gerbil fans tell a male from a female by how they are acting in there homes etc?

[wizz]

I don't think there's any great difference, no. As it depends on the individual gerbil. Some are more or less active than others in both females and males.

As it happens I've had more males declan than females, and females can very much live together. In 10+ years of keeping them I've only had 2 female declans and that includes keeping them in large groups, sometimes I feel they get an unfair reputation.
It's all down to individual breeding, if a breeder selects their females for extreme friendliness and the 'norm' is for them to live in groups then they're fine - this includes keeping pups with their parents until 12+ weeks old so they're effectively living in a large colony.
At least that's what I do and know others who can also keep their females in groups of 4+ but it does take years to get lines so friendly.

In general you can only tell a male and a female by their body - males often get much bigger in bulk than females, but there are exceptions.

[amski]

I agree, there are few differences. I've had a pair of females who were fine and now have two pairs of males, they were a four but declanned.

[cortez1011]

In all of my cases, males are calmer and easier to handle and socialize.
My females were not mean but had tons of energy and just wanted to run and play all the time which made it hard to bond to the little girls!
I have almost always enjoyed having males as pets, but I have met awesome older female gerbil that were calm and loved to be held