Gerbils who attack in tank are fine in shallow bowl

[sparkbubble]

My two female gerbils are still very uncomfortable around each other. even though they sleep close to the divider at night, they marked a lot and arched after a failed intro a few days ago. I've recently been trying to hold them close to the other for a couple seconds at a time before switching. today, I put one in a bowl w/sand and held the her up to my other hand with my smaller gerbil. that gerbil pulled herself out of my hand and crawled into the bowl. I panicked and expected a fight, but nothing happened. The other sniffed her butt briefly but she turned away and they both just peeked over the edges of the bowl. I let them be for around 30 seconds before putting them back.  This is wildly different from their last intro two weeks back where the other gerbil aggressively sat on the other and didn't move for the entire time (because of this the most recent intro was only a couple minutes long.) Why wasn't there a fight, especially because of the small space (8 inch diameter?)  This is the same bowl I leave in there for them to dig/pee/play in. Does the scent have anything to do with it? Should I push my luck and try it again tomorrow?

[LilyandDaisy]

I'd say it's because they were a bit disoriented and fighting was not the dominant thing on their minds. Gerbils put together randomly in a neutral environment will sometimes tolerate each other for up to half a hour. This is why when you introduce after a split tank introduction, you need to watch them very closely for at least the first half hour. After half an hour is when gerbils start to think "ok, this is my home now. I need to get down to business and either make peace with or get rid of the invader"

I used to try the holding the gerbils close together thing but I stopped when it occurred to me it might make them feel trapped and antagonised to be forcibly so close together, and also when I decided that if there was a fight, I didn't want my hands in the middle of it.

The problem I can see with a small space introduction is that, while you do want them in a smaller than usual space, they need to have enough space to communicate to you and to each other that they're not very interested in fighting but they're also not comfortable with each other yet, and they would do this by avoiding each other and acting tense. Whereas if they were forced together into a small space, they might just go straight to fighting.