change of character

[pheebs]

Hi, was wondering if anyone can lend some advice or possible reason for why my gerbil has suddenly decided that sinking his teeth into my finger is a good idea.
I have had a pair of males for about 4 months and initially this one was pretty shy. With more handling he did get better and more tame, both gerbils were nibbley but never have bitten. Now if I put my hand in the cage I have to watch this one gerbil pretty carefully. Firstly if I push any woodchips about he pushes my hand out of the way quite violently for a gerbil and has nipped. I also tried to pick the other gerbil up and he went for me again. Can anyone help explain this huge change of character? Are gerbils territorial and as such I am invading his space? Or can they be protective of other gerbils? And most of all what can I do to stop it? please help!
Thanks, Phoebe

[pheebs]

In addition, I went away recently and took the cage over to someone else - is it possible this disrupted the gerbils and thus caused this behaviour change?

[floppy]

It could be a territorial thing...or maybe your hand just smells nice! Make sure you wash your hands before you go near him. I have a gerbil who was a bit prone to sinking her teeth into my hands too. She was living alone and I put it down to her maybe being depressed and lonely. We gave her tons of extra attention and she's not so bad now but she does still nip a lot. She's currently living in a split cage with 2 young females. She's quite a big girl and I thought she would go bananas at the pups but it's the other way round...one of the pups wants to attack her! :p
Gerbils are all different and there are probably a number of possible reasons why your gerbil is behaving like this. I'm sure other people here will be able to offer you possible reasons...

[MonoOmoi]

I had a very similar experience with one of my females not that long ago. In my case, there was absolutely no change in the environment that I knew of, but I would say for your gerbils there is a chance that leaving them with someone else may have upset this particular one for some reason. Also, sometimes even 4 months isn't quite enough for your gerbils to get used to you, and since they were still "nibbley" I'm not as surprised by the situation. Especially if your friend handled them, it may have been enough to make him scared of human hands for some reason.

I still don't know why it happened with mine, but after a month or two of patience she is friendly again. You may just have to start over with hand taming him, by offering treats and not picking him up until he is willing to climb on your hand by himself. Someone also suggested to me that I use gloves to handle her for awhile, and then slowly move into using my bare hands. I did not try this but maybe you will want to.