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Post by tanzanyte on Oct 5, 2022 10:30:28 GMT -8
I love the enclosure, it looks amazing! Can I just ask, with regards to the upset they had when outside, if they were ok once they were back in their enclosure or did you have to keep breaking them up? It's interesting that it can still happen like that once bonded and seemingly peaceful.
I hope it continues to go well in the larger cage.
Tilly sounds very much like our Pepsi, he is very gentle but frightened of quite a lot and his anxiety often makes him appear slightly unhinged.
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Oct 5, 2022 10:45:28 GMT -8
I love the enclosure, it looks amazing! Can I just ask, with regards to the upset they had when outside, if they were ok once they were back in their enclosure or did you have to keep breaking them up? It's interesting that it can still happen like that once bonded and seemingly peaceful. I hope it continues to go well in the larger cage. Tilly sounds very much like our Pepsi, he is very gentle but frightened of quite a lot and his anxiety often makes him appear slightly unhinged. Outside the enclosure I think Wispa was chasing Tilly and getting in her face. That can happen sometimes even with a bonded pair and usually my policy is to break it up or distract the chasing gerbil once or twice but if it happens again, the gerbils go home. I remember with Lily and Daisy, Daisy would sometimes chase Lily when they were outside the enclosure but in their case Daisy was dominant anyway. Back in their enclosure, Wispa was just getting in Tilly's face a lot, and generally being annoying. I think this might be her way of pushing boundaries without a direct challenge. I didn't have to intervene and they settled down after a couple of hours. I think the free roaming was just too much disruption too soon. My theory with Tilly is that she is prone to high stress levels and when she is highly stressed, any noise she happens to hear can be interpreted as a real danger and develop into a kind of phobia. That could be any noise but statistically is most likely to be an everyday one, like the sound of cardboard being chewed. She's ok now but when they moved into the big enclosure she was initially quite anxious. I noticed at one point, she was very worried and tense about something, then Wispa started drinking from the water bottle. Tilly pushed her away, but not because she wanted to drink herself. I think the noise of the bottle was just too much for her at that time. It's like a kind of misophonia, very interesting.
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Post by tanzanyte on Oct 7, 2022 11:12:20 GMT -8
All of my gerbils have chased one another when outside the cage. The boys do it quite a bit to one another. I can't say I've noticed it being one chasing more than the other and thankfully never leads to anything, but I can't imagine I'd rest easy with that sort of behaviour with bonded gerbils.
I'm glad it wasn't anything major with the girls and quickly calmed down.
Poor Tilly, that sounds very stressful. I know they hear stuff way beyond our hearing range and always wonder how much other stuff is going on that we don't have a clue about. Ours can suddenly start thumping and I've heard nothing to set them off. I know Pepsi's fear is way beyond Max's. He stays hidden for longer as well.
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