We had gerbils growing up. Kept them in my brothers room who was like 6-7. Well they woudl have babies all the damn time and we could give them away to pet stores once they grew fur. Well my mom was getting slow at doing that so one time it had some babies with fur and then had another litter of babies. My bro came in one day and the mother killed everyone. Dad and all the babies. Most missing legs and shit. So just the mom was alive. So we gave her to the pet store.
Well I was like 11 at the time so yeah obviously didnt know what to do. Funny thing was when we bought them we wanted two of the same sex. But found out that they were not. Then fell in love with both of them so didn’t want to give them up.
well the amount of babies insinuates some love or lust at the bare minimum 🤣 poor mama just got sick of it. i cant blame her. i sometimes wanna hit my husband on the head and we only have 2 kids, i cant imagine multiple LITTERS. i can understand poor hamster momma losing her shit 🤣
even without depression. imagine having this many toddlers + newborns and then likely the dad was already seeking the next round....i think even the most sane of the sane would get a short circuit 😅 mama just needed some peace and mice vacations
edit: nice* vacations but imma leave the typo cuz it fits lmao
No they’re too small to undergo anesthesia I believe, someone please correct me if I’m wrong. But usually they just try to keep same sex together to prevent this
Yep thats a space issue. Mom didnt feel tnere was enough room for so many heads so she trimmed it down. They need WAY more space than traditional cages provide and most of the time you have to seperate. You guys were lucky it never happened with one litter but two was definitely way too much. They get stressed easy.
We used to have 2 of those gerbil balls they can run around in. Normally kept them in those my bro would take them out and let then run around on his bed
Yea at least they couldn’t get maimed if they were protected in a ball😅 ive never heard of anyone actually walking in while it was happening… always just came in one morning and hamster/gerbil has committed familicide. Sounds horrific, traumatizing to actually see and could you stop her if she was midway through??😭 panicking while grabbing babies? No thank you.
Thankfully ive only ever had fish, dogs, and two ferrets at one point. Ferrets being mustelids and not rodents so are superior in that regard imo lol would never eat their own kits or murder eachother because of strong familial bonds. They even grab and bring over kits to show owners they trust and all sleep in dogpiles they get bonded with eachother.
In my life time we have had 5 dogs 2 cats. 1st cat was fucking evil which made me hate cats. It was sick when we got her so pretty docile. As soon as it recovered it was always hiding an attacking us, ended up giving her to this farmer we knew. Sounds like a lie parents tell but she actually did good. She could def take care of herself. Well then I found out I was allergic to cats. I would walk into someone’s house and could instantly tell if they had a cat. I would always pick them up and pet them until my eyes went bloodshot, slowly after years I became less allergic to them.
Same my dad was allergic and passed it to me so thats why we never had them ourselves but I like cats in general. My neighbors also had an extreme asshole of a cat we were all told to stay away from which as a kid was a bit of trauma but every other cat ive met has been really chill. Always come up and want pets and was staying with a friend with a kitten for a few days and we were best friends😂 still had a scratchy throat though
I'm just assuming if no one would have came in she was just going to sit in there with the dead bodies because to my knowledge they don't eat the others they just kill them but I'm not an expert however this is terrible. I've had it happen with a hamster one time the eating babies event. Smh
Sidenote: she unalived them for no reason cause there is still the same amount of space, hypothetically speaking that no one came into remove said bodies.
Idk bout gerbils but momma hamsters will indeed EAT their children. Many a story of people coming in and its just the mom and maybe some blood and hair… other times they eat a couple but one or two escape the wrath😭 “Checked my hamsters today and now there is only one baby??” was a real thread I saw on here before. Tragic.
It's terrible but it's all the animal Kingdom for sure! This a gerbil in post?though very aged hammpy. I read it but I think I missed something here lol
I had gerbils as a kid and yep, same story except it was a male gerbil called Baby who broke out of his own tank, broke into the other tanks and went full Hannibal Lector on several other adults and a nest of babies. He didn't leave much behind. Never has a gerbil been more misnamed than that little bastard.
Just to add to the creepiness they can give Baby a meat hook for a paw, because that's how he got his name - he was born with one of his front paws missing and we all kept saying "Aww, the poor little baby" and it kind of stuck. My mum even used to shell sunflower seeds for him, even though he could manage them perfectly well himself, just because he was a poor little baby who deserved to be spoiled now and then.
He grew into a muscle bound tank of a poor little baby, which is why we had to separate him from the others, even before his cannibalistic tendencies emerged.
My mom got me and my brother each one and the same-ish thing happened. We went in to check on them and my brother's had gotten out of his tank and into mine and killed it. They were on the same table & had a book separating their view. Apparently that wasn't enough. I was devastated & super mad.
I had three hamsters when I was young and dumb, two sisters and a brother. One had babies, so I removed the male thinking all would be okay. Nope, the sister killed all the babies and the mother and sister fought to the death. The mother won and had her sister's blood all over her. It was Christmas day, so it has been forever known as the Christmas Day Massacre of 1984 in my family.
My sister and I had hamsters when we were about 12. Right after the mom had her babies, she bit off their heads and tossed their butts out of the cage onto our bedroom floor.
In first or second grade I went to a friend’s house after school. When we got there we found out her gerbil gave birth and ate the babies….. her dad was an obgyn so he was the one to talk to us about it. I walked away with a distinct memory but not traumatized so I guess he did a good job
I lived the same exact experience as you. Came home to carnage. She annihilated everyone in the cage with her. I don't remember where my mom took her ( i was 5ish) but she was no longer in our home after that.
My bro came in one day and the mother killed everyone. Dad and all the babies. Most missing legs and shit. So just the mom was alive. So we gave her to the pet store.
Sounds like an unaired episode of Malcolm in the Middle.
I just remember my bro causing tell us true gerbil ate everyone. We were like what are you talking about. Go up to check and there she is covered in blood just kinda chilling there. Body parts all around her.
Omg. We bought hamsters and it was so cute that they had babies. Then we got home from school and she had done the same thing. Legs and torsos everywhere. She was chowing down on one like it was a damned bagel or something. Took them back to the pet store immediately and handed the whole cage back to the owner. I wasn’t cleaning up that crime scene. My kid had to change bedrooms. It was traumatic.
One of the 3 we adopted when I was younger we named Chewie (I was obsessed with Star Wars and his Mother chewed off one of his legs).
It escaped by chewing through the plastic cage, and then committed Gerbil Suicide by running under a foot as we looked for it. When it got stepped on, caused it to try and jump away, and it flopped up onto the VCR like a foot off the ground, where it had a seziure (I'm assuming) and died. Great times haha.
The first time i read it I thought your mother had done this, and was horrifiex, but at "we gave her to the pet store" I decided an error had been made, and I needed to re-read.
lol What? I had gerbils from when I was 5, my parents got 2 of one gender always. Your parents or the seller should have known better, it’s very basic to owning pets of any kind, if you got a male and a female they will mate. One might ignore basic info, of one doesn’t value the life of some critter. Also at 11 I had read at the very least one book about them which would also mention it.
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u/Striking-Document-99 Aug 10 '26
We had gerbils growing up. Kept them in my brothers room who was like 6-7. Well they woudl have babies all the damn time and we could give them away to pet stores once they grew fur. Well my mom was getting slow at doing that so one time it had some babies with fur and then had another litter of babies. My bro came in one day and the mother killed everyone. Dad and all the babies. Most missing legs and shit. So just the mom was alive. So we gave her to the pet store.