Not, they are not rats. Although my parents may think they look like rats that you may find in a sewer. They are Mongolian gerbils and they are much cuter that rats! The person at the pet shop said they are of the color blue although i thought that they were gray. They are social animals so i had no choice but to buy a pair.
Gerbils are compulsive diggers. They cannot stop digging the side of their cage. It may seem stupid since it was obvious that they were going no where, yet they can never seem to stop doing that.
Wiedenmayer writes ‘It was hypothesized that stereotypic digging develops because stimuli that control digging motivation are lacking’. From the results of his experiment, he found that gerbils do not dig as much if there were already burrows and tunnels available in their living space.
Knowing this, I now know that there is absolutely no way to stop the never-ending digging in their cage. Putting in cardboard tubes will never work since they are really good at chewing cardboard too. Tube Attack
References:
Christoph Wiedenmayer, Causation of the ontogenetic development of stereotypic digging in gerbils, Animal Behavior, Volume 53, Issue 3, March 1997, Pages 461-470
Crazy Gerbil Digging, Youtube
Gerbil Tube Attack Go!, Youtube
Picture: IMG_6255, miss_verstadnenis. URL: www.flickr.com/photos/miss_verstaendnis/432811793/, posted on 24 March 2007