---------- > From: Ehrenfried Ehrenstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Wild living gerbils show two maxima of surface activity, which are > obviously mainly in the _diurnal_ period: > The first about 5 hours after sunrise and the second 1 or 2 hours > before or direct at sundown. > And they allways prefer to be underground (sleeping?) at midday. > > May be, it's not only light, but temperature dependent too. Nights are > too cold in Mongolia? > With Shaw's Jirds it is definitely light. They sleep during the day, then get up around sunset. They are then active till about 1am. Then they go to bed. They wake up again around sunrise and are active for a couple of hours before retiring until sunset. I usually have around half a dozen cages with Shaw's in them and it is amazing to watch them all emerge. One minute, there are none. Then within half an hour, they are all up and active. Even more interesting is how their times change with the seasons. The only good thing about this time of year is that the jirds get up around 4pm, so I can play with them all evening. In June, I do not catch a glimpse of them much before 9pm. My Persian jirds seem truly nocturnal. They emerge much later than the Shaw's and don't get really active till midnight. They then stay awake all night, though luckily they are not very noisy animals. The gerbils - well basically they just fit in. If anything interesting is happening, they are up and ready for the action. This is one of the reasons they make good pets for children. When a child wants to play with his/her pets, then gerbils are quite happy to play. Sue
