Environmental enrichment for gerbils in the veterinary and domestic environment

Small exotics, commonly referred to as ‘small furries’, include hamsters, gerbils, rabbits and an array of other species. Gerbils are one of the easiest rodents to maintain and manage due to their typically non-aggressive nature. Usually found in deserts and semi-arid geographical regions of the world, the Mongolian gerbils available today originated from 20 pairs of captured animals. These were maintained in 1935 in a closed, random-bred colony at the Kitasato Institute in Japan.