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When the pups are 2 or 3 days old, the ears start to develop and a few days later the first hairs start to grow. Gerbils grow fast, and when they are 10 days old they will try to crawl out of their nest, but their eyes will only open around 17 days. At this age they will also start to nibble at the food. When they are about 24 days old they won’t drink milk any more.
It is best to keep young gerbils with their parents until they are 6 weeks old.
Sometimes the parents eat their young, this is not because they are hungry or stressed. Gerbils follow their instinct and keep their nest clean by eating dead or sick pups. In the wild predators would otherwise smell the dead animals and come and thread the whole family.
These are pups from a champagne x black cross
Next you find pictures which show the development of male and female gerbil pups, there you can see the differences between the two sexes at different stages of development.
In the above pictures you can clearly see the nipples of the female on days 9,10 and 11. On day 12 the hairs on the belly already overgrow the nipples, which are not present in males.
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