Shelley Baker-Naseth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
>
>Hello gerbil lovers,
>
Hi!
>My question is
>how do I tell people what color they are? I don’t know how to describe
>their colors… I see 3 identical "brown" triplets and 3 identical "white"
>triplets… and they are almost 5 weeks old now. They are "popping" and
>running all over the place… and poor Dot is pregnant again and she
>looks fat and miserable and cranky. Are the brown ones considered
>Agouti? They have no spots or anything on them. And the white ones
>have real fluffy longer fur and kind of a grey-ish pigment that shows thru
>on their tails and ears and around their eyes, and their eyes are black.
>When I look at the pictures on the gerbil colour pages, I see lots of
>"white" gerbils so I am confused now.
The gerbil colour palette has some good pictures of gerbil showing most
of the main colours.
http://home.wtal.de/ehr/gerbils/colors.htm
The best thing to do is break up what you see:
1) What colour are the eyes? Technically they can be pink, ruby, dark
ruby and black, but in practise in normal light Pink and Ruby look red,
and Dark Ruby and Black look black in all but very bright light.
2) Does the gerbil have a white belly? By this I don't mean white
patches or markings, I mean completely white. In some colours the white
hairs will have dark grey bases, but that does not stop the belly being
described as white.
3) Is there a sudden change from the white belly to the colour on the
back?
4) Are the hairs on the back he same colour from base to tip? Blow on
them to part the hairs and see. Most white gerbils are white from base
to tip. Other "white" colours will have grey or light brown bases and
dark tips. Other "whites" will have small dark tips.
5) With "whites," does dark skin show through the light coloured fur on
the ears, nose tail etc?
6) If the gerbil is coloured, are the nose, tail, ears, darker than the
body?
7) Does the colour change over time?
8) What is the overall colour.
9) Lastly, does the gerbil have white spots, patterns or flecks?
This will give you the information you need to diagnose the colour,
although it is not always a precise art.
The NGS show standards describe most common colours in the UK. These are
theoretical ideals for show purposes, but can help show the differences
between one colour and another.
http://www.gerbils.co.uk/gerbils/standard.htm
--
Julian
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
National Gerbil Society
http://www.gerbils.co.uk/
