Hello Donna,
The observations on the "Canibalism" pages come from our own experience and
from what we have learnt from studying Mongolian Gerbils.
During the past three decades we have been able to build up a picture of
what **can** take place in Gerbil behaviour. Our biggest experience with
cannibalism came during the early part of the 1980's when my husbands
brother, Martin Hinsley, was keeping Gerbils in deep glass enclosures, with
a deep level of substrate and controlled breeding.
Martin Hinsley was up to that time supplementing his Gerbils diet with
luncheon meat and apparently this was going on quite happily. But, when a
bad case of cannibalism took place where two enclosure members started to
kill and eat younger pups it caused us all to radically rethink our views on
giving meat to Gerbils.
We took advice from a breeder in the area that David and Martin's Father
knew and he suggested that removing meat from the diet may remove the
development of a taste for such food items. From that time onwards both
David and Martin have - respectively - had hardly any cases of cannibalism
among their sometimes very extensive Gerbil breeding activities.
We know that some people have very strong views on this matter, but we can
only pass on our own experience and what we have learnt, over the decades.
Elizabeth Hinsley.
Gerbil Breeding,
www.gerbils.org
