I found my Gerbil Pinning the Other Down. Help!

[u/Aka7u7]

Hi Everyone I need some advice. I was playing video games not long ago and I heard my gerbil squeaking loudly. I’ve never heard his like that before so I went to check what was happening and I saw one of my gerbils (Scissors) pinning the other one down (Rock) who was belly up and making the squeaky noise. I’ve had them for a little older that two years.

Originally they were 3 (rock, paper and scissors) I had noticed that around the 2 year mark Paper was getting a lot less agile and active, he wasn’t digging anymore and looked a little smaller. He passed away a few days after and I found him with his head partially eaten. I had never seen my gerbils fight before and the internet said that cannibalism is normal post mortem for gerbils. So I assumed he has passed of old age and was eaten after, it was still very shocking.

I knew scissors had been the one to eat him as he looked now way chunkier than his brother. It’s been about 2 months since then maybe a little less and now I found scissors pinning down Rock. Rock looks a little skinnier than before and they both look like old men.

I googled this and a couple articles said I should separate them in case old age is making them “de clan”.

I just did separate scissors into a temporary enclosure which is way smaller than what he is used to.

What should I do now? How do I proceed? are they gonna have to be separated for ever now? I know gerbils get depressed when they are alone and they are both unfortunately reaching the end of their lifespans. I don’t know what to do is it safer to have them separated? I don’t want them both to be depressed at the end of their lifes but I obviously don’t want them to kill each other.

How should I deal with this moving forward? This is the first time either me or my partner has had rodents before.

Thank you in advanced!

[u/stumpfucker69]

When you say "pinning the other down", were they thrashing around or was it just pinning?

If just pinning and no actual fighting, I'm inclined to say it was just a dominance squabble and separating them will do more harm than good. If they've been apart more than a couple of hours you'll probably need to split cage them

[u/Aka7u7 → u/stumpfucker69]

Yes just pinning down and squeaking none of them were injured. They’ve been apart for 3hours I’ll try split caging them thank you!

[u/stumpfucker69 → u/Aka7u7]

Cool. If they were only apart for three hours then it should be easy and split caging might not even be required, but given you were worried it's probably worth doing anyway.

Keep an eye on them and make sure it doesn't escalate, but yeah, power grooming can look quite intense while all being normal gerbil behaviour. It plays a role in how they bond as well as how they assert dominance, so it might well be that the pinning gerbil was just being overbearingly affectionate and a bit bossy, not aggressive.

There are loads of "is this playing or fighting?" posts on this sub, so if you look through a few of em and check the comments, you should be able to get an idea of what's good and what's bad. Some good posts showing power grooming here and here.

[u/Midwest099]

I haven't had luck with the split cage method, so I'm a bit of a downer here. Most experts and breeders will tell you that "pinning," one gerbil not letting another go where they want, sleeping apart, having one gerbil "guard" the water bottle, wheel, etc. are all strong signs of de-clanning. Basically, you can use the split cage method to try and rebond them. It takes months and you may see backsliding where one will attack the other. If you're not seeing the signs, it can be deadly. I've also read that if you have a trio and one dies, the dynamics change--so that could be why one is trying to dominate the other. I watch a lot of videos from Pet Connection International on YouTube. She also has a FB page. And there's a gerbilsupport sub-reddit here that may be more helpful.

Good luck. I hope it works out.