* Sandrats/gerbils

Sandrats are rodents that live in the desert. Unlike rat and mice, their tails are covered with fur. There are pretty hyperactive and enjoy running around and digging. If you want to keep sandrats, you need to give them a large terrarium to run around in. Cover the ground of terrarium with sand, rocks and pieces of wood. They need to live in groups of no less then 2 and no more then 4 members of their own species.

They are omnivores, so they need both animals and plants to eat. Mine like turkey, raisins, seeds, mealworms, al sorts of fruits and vegetables, and gerbil-food from the pet store. Don't use food bowls, just throw the food in the cage and they will find it.

They rarely ever bite humans, and are quite easy to care for. I think they make very suitable and entertaining pets.

I have 6 sandrats, 4 males and 2 females. Their names are; Anubis, Ra, Horus, Seth, Ahti and Meret.

I got Anubis and Ra from a pet shop, they are brothers. I then bought Horus and Seth from a breeder a couple of weeks later, they were way younger then Anubis and Ra, who eminently adopted the babies when they saw them. They both kept one of the babies save and cared for them. The 2 babies quickly grew to be bigger then their adoptive fathers.

I was not planning to get any more of these little critters after the first 4 males, but I then saw 2 females at the petting zoo, they where very skinny and scared, because I feared for their health, I took them home and bought another terrarium, with the intention of giving them away to a new owner. But the entire family grew quite fond of them, and we decided that, since they require so little care, we could keep them all.

They sound like peacefull creatures, in most species the male animals don't accept eachother in there teritory.

Adult gerbils do kill each other, but to children they are very kind. In the wild they live together with hundreds of others, and they all grow up in the same tunnel system.
It is said that the females are more aggressive then the males in this species.

I let a elderly female (Ahti) from one cage and a young male (Anubis) from the other cage, play together on the couch. And the female attacked the male. The male defended himself and damaged her paw.

Now I just keep the two groups away from each other at all times.

But to their own group they are all very kind, they do "fight" sometimes, but that’s just playing and establishing their role in the group.

Anubis just escaped from his terrarium. We were able to catch him, but I think he'll just escape again if we don't build a new, more secure lid...

He scared me >_> If I wouldn't have been sitting close to my room, I probaly wouldn't have seen him escaping, and he could have gotten crushed or electrocuted.

Anubis and Athi are some pretty awesome names. What'dyou call the other ones?

Anubis (male)


Ra (male)


Seth (male)


Horus (male)


Meret (female)


Ahti (female)

All peacefulness ended 2 days ago... Ra has been severely injured by his group, he is covered with bite-marks, his tail is broken and his entire hip is one large wound. I suspect Seth started the fight. (seth is only slightly injured; missing a toe-nail.)

The vet gives him a good change of survival, but he might lose his tail.

If Ra recovers, I will have to separate the group into pairs.

The tip of Ra's tail came off, but other then that, he seems to be healing pretty well. I put him in a new terrarium with his brother.

We recently found out that Horus is also injured, and has a large absess on his tail... close to his spine. We are giving him medicines, and have no choice but to wait and see if he will recover normaly, or will need surgery.

My feeling says surgery but hey who am i..
would suck anyway

Surgery in small animals like sandrats is very dangerous, I will only resort to that if there is absolutely no other option.

I had the same problem with my pet rats. Only, for some strage reason, they somehow all developed a cancer tumor. Except for one,who ate himself to death. We found him with half a pound of floorpellets in his mouth.

Brown rats, the one most commonly kept as pets, (thou they are not often brown, when bred to be pets) were first bred by cancer researchers, to use as testing animals. So your rats got cancer, because, in the past, they were bred to get it.

My rats, who were originally used in epileptic tests, and thus have a high change of epilepsy, don't get cancer as often as brown rats.

The swelling on Horus his tail is just dirt and sand that got trapped under his skin, but it could still severely damage his spinal cord if we just let it be.

I'm not saying that your pet has got cancer. I'm saying my parents often stood before the dilemma operation/no operation with our rats. A cruel as it sounds,after a while we just stopped giving them an operation,because it was fucking useless. The tumors would just grow on back at a different spot. Poor animals...

Yes, cancer and brown rats... you can't stop it. They should start all over with breeding them... take healthy rats from the wild, and breed those until they have tame, healty pets... but I guess they are just not worth enough for breeders to go through all that trouble...

Most Sandrat breeders crossbreed their tame animals with wild animals every so often.

OMG NEVER PUUT A GERBIL IN A MICROWAVE LOL

EnemyOfGod wrote:

OMG NEVER PUUT A GERBIL IN A MICROWAVE LOL

They should put you in a microwave.

Meret died last night. Now we have to search for a pup to keep her lonely partner company.

Ahw:(

We brought her to the taxidermist yesterday. The day after tommorrow we will go to a breeder to buy a pup for Ahti.

Not sure what name I'll give the baby yet... maybe Hathor, the goddess of birth, women, dancing and music.

Since Ahti is the goddess of hatred, fear and choas.

We got the pup, and named her Sektet. She's adorable, and Ahti seems to accept her.

Here's a picture of Sektet with her mother and siblings:

She's the second one from the left, with the yellowish fur and red eyes.

I'll post a picture of her and Ahti when I got one.

This has been going on for the last couple of hours:


Sektet sneaks out of her underground tunnel as I distract Ahti.


Ahti notices


Ahti checks to see who this intruder is, and realizes it's Sektet


Ahti pushes Sektet back to her underground tunnel


Sektet is stubborn and it takes a while to get her to go back.


Athi is victorious.


Repeat.

Haha wtf, but, cool animal^^