Paige McDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
>
>This is very untrue. Rats will go everywhere and come and climb on your
>shoulder and bevery affectionate. I owned rats for a few weeks and they sure
>were a joy when I let them run around. Gerbils and rats are great pets but in
>very different ways.
>
>Paige
Not as quickly as gerbils do. If released into an open space rats will
tend to hang back in corners and under cover until they are very sure of
their surroundings. Gerbils just don't do that. If anything, gerbils do
the opposite, they explore until something spooks them when they will
run for the nearest shadow.
OPEN FIELD BEHAVIOR OF THE MONGOLIAN GERBIL.: Nauman, D.J., 1968,
Psychonomic Science, 10(5), 163-4
has some interesting diagrams that show typical gerbil behaviour
compared with laboratory rats. They are tracks showing how the animals
moved in an open area. The gerbil tracks look like spaghetti, with
random lines all over the place tangled together as the gerbil explores
straight away. The rat tracks look like a big ring as the rats follow
the walls and make very few explorations of the open area.
This probably has a lot to do with the natural habitats of the two
species. Rats gain most by survival. They get plenty of opportunities to
feed because they tend to live near man. Gerbils, on the other hand,
come fro ma much more barren habitat where it probably takes much longer
to search for food. Whilst rats are free to forage reasonable distances
from their home, gerbils will normally only move ten metres or so from
their burrow entrances, so exploration and flight make a lot of sense.
--
Julian
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* Jackie and Julian *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* National Gerbil Society *
* http://www.gerbils.co.uk/ *
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