Boxing fights over who grooms who?

[j]

Is this anything to worry about or keep an eye on?

I've seen it more with the females than the males but..
one gerbil will go up to another and just start grooming..
The second gerbil starts boxing/fighting with them.. And they turn around and start grooming the first one...(back and forth attempts at grooming eachother)
Then a third (sometimes forth) will join in and box and sniff..
.
Then they all go their seperate ways..

I know when I only had 2 together, one will pin another down, groom them and the one getting groomed would get all annoyed and squeak a lot..

[queenofthenile]

Just to let you know, Jay, that kind of behaviour could mean that they will declan at a later date. I had a pair of gerbils where the aggressive female constantly did this to the male and I had to split them up.

[j]

yep definatly looks like declanning.

They were doing it again this morning and I didn't have time to watch them, so I split screen the 2 older ones who keep going at it.
The mother, older daughter and a 31/2month old on one side.
They did fine.

Other side, 2 older daughters and another younger daughter.
Came back.. 3 1/2month old was killed.

Didn't make any sense at all because I've NEVER seen a problem with the little ones. It was always the older ones having the grooming fights.

So I now have them split caged, going to leave them like this for a day or so to make sure I picked the right ones to seperate.