Aspies For Freedom

CUTE! It looks like a baby Hippopotamus!!!

"Gerbils are not legal here."

!?!

Awww, so tiny...when do they get fur?

Gerbils are illegal because California has about 20 species of native kangaroo rats (Dipodomys spp.), many of which are endangered. Because gerbils are basically the Asian equivalent of kangaroo rats, living in the same type of environment and filling the same niche, if they escaped into the wild and started breeding they could wreak havoc on fragile ecosystems. The list of rodents that are legal to own in California is as follows:

Domestic Rats
Domestic Mice
Siberian Dwarf Hamsters
Roborovski's Dwarf Hamsters
Syrian Hamsters
Chinchillas
Guinea Pigs

At least, these were the only species we were allowed to sell when I worked at a pet store.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!  What a gorgeous little thing!  May we have more pics as the fur develops?

I don't know about gerbils, but pet rabbits are illegal here (Queensland) for the same reason - they're an environmental pest.

Anyone else here remember the computer game Knight Lore?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Lore
My younger brother thought the werewolf looked like a pig, my older brother's friend thought it looked like a teddy bear, whereas I thought it looked like a Moomin - and don't Moomins look like hippos?!

Squeak now or forever hold your peace.

Does anyone know if a guinea pig can be taken out on a leash and walked?  Would it like it?

Hahaha, any "dog" small enough to fall prey to a lizard isn't really a dog at all.

What does Natalie feed her snakes?  gerbils?

My snakes eat thawed mice and rats.

The one time I the snakes' feeding time at London Zoo the keeper made a point of wiggling the dead mice on the end of a stick so the snakes would think they were alive. Do you have to do that?

Most snakes don't care if what they are eating is alive or dead. Many species will eat roadkill and other carrion in the wild as long as it is reasonably fresh. In fact, I remember reading a year or two ago that on some small island off the coast of South Carolina (I think that's where it was), there is a population of Cottonmouths that is thriving, despite the fact that there are no rodents there - it turns out the snakes were living on a diet that was almost exclusively made of dead fish dropped/regurgitated by the birds nesting in the trees above.

There are a few exceptions - some arboreal species hunt exclusively by sight and their prey needs to be moving in order to elicit a feeding response (a snake's vision is based on movement). For these species it is usually necessary to wiggle/move the prey for them. Also, some ground-dwelling boas and pythons just sit in one place in the wild and wait for some unfortunate animal to walk in front of their mouths, so with these guys you sometimes have to tap them on the face with the prey to make them realize it's there. I say "sometimes" because most of them will figure it out and eat the prey just from the smell alone, and moving it will not be necessary.

All that said, when I feed my snakes, I wiggle the prey after they have already grabbed onto it to make them constrict it. Many colubrid snakes won't constrict their prey if it doesn't "struggle", so I wiggle it for them just because I think it is good excercise for them to constrict things. It is almost always not necessary in order to just get the snake to eat, though.

Are you going to keep the baby gerbils?  

I know someone who made silly hats for their rodent pets to wear.

I'm not sure you could get a guinea pig to stay on a leash, or in anything confining!  When one of mine ("Papa," 1990?-1996, rest in peace) was recovering from surgery and needed to be kept from chewing his stitches, I made a one-piece outfit for him by cutting legholes in a sock...well, as fast as I could put the suit on him, he would wriggle out of it!