19ish-day-old gerbil babies, cleaning their faces

A group shot of our litter of strange critters that shouldn’t be… washing their faces. Eyes should be open soon.

Baby gerbils, about 19 days old - the one in the foreground is grooming

How we came to have baby gerbils is one of the strangest of the strange stories – one of our MALE gerbils seemed to spontaneously change sexes after living with several other males for 2 years, and suddenly produced these offspring. Can’t explain it, other than to think perhaps the mother was a hermaphrodite and lost her boy bits when some of the older gerbils died off and their survival was apparently threatened. Weird, but a happy result.