Well, now isn’t that a good question – and often asked in the colder weather when people start switching the heating on and the hedgehogs come out!
Gerbils may well start to be less active; not seen as much above the surface of their burrows; and, maybe even stashing huge quantities of food underground – but is this hibernation or just like us humans staying in for the winter?
Well – did you guess right? The answer is ‘No’ – gerbils don’t hibernate naturally in the habitat they live in, it just isn’t something they ever needed to evolve to do.
However, that doesn’t mean their bodies won’t react badly to constant low temperatures (below thick jumper weather in human parlance!).
If you live in an environment where the temperature of the room that your gerbil’s enclosure is sitting in regularly drops below 12°C every day – then you might need to take action.
How Cold Is Too Cold For A Gerbil?
If an animal gets too cold for standard functioning (their normal habitat’s average conditions) they will start to display symptoms of the cold, that over time (or very quickly in the most extremes) will be detrimental to their health. Just like it would for humans who were sitting outside in the snow.
This essential environment varies for all animals – and some animals kept as pets need heating or cooling at various times of the year – or ALL year depending on how far from their natural environment you are keeping them! Examples include poison dart frogs, bearded dragons and even exotic hedgehogs and tenrecs.
However – don’t be fooled by the temperatures of their ‘natural’ habitat without taking into account where the animal lives in that habitat – for example: humans live in very cold climates because they have a suitable den and have adapted to that environment with their clothing. So, comparing a colony of gerbils living underground in deep burrows filled with their collected dried grasses and food stocks to last all winter to your pair of gerbils in a gerbilarium on a counter in the spare room at home is futile.
Also, don’t be fooled by the temperature of your home when you are in it and awake. You need to check on the temperature of their room when you aren’t home and when you are asleep (the two times you won’t have the heating on we bet).
We have had our digital thermometers in our gerbil room for a complete year now and know that in cold weather, the lowest temperature is around the 6-8am mark (in an east-facing room) – so our gerbils need supplementary heating to be active at a time we aren’t even awake!
Assume also that if you have heating on a timer to be nice and toasty before you usually wake up? So, by the time your alarm ticks over – you are in a warm home and have no idea how cold your gerbil room was just a short hour ago.
What Is ‘A State Of Torpor’?
Torpor is often quoted with hamsters – and not so much gerbils – but why so? Hamsters don’t hibernate either do they?
Well, yes they do – but they shouldn’t when kept as pets indoors.
One of the main reasons is the environment. Gerbils often have enough substrate and nesting material – as they are burrowers – and gerbil keepers know they need a good 6 inches or more of substrate and decent nesting materials (like hay and straw) – and also glass tanks (which are great insulators) – so they may well be super snug even if the room itself is cold.
Hamsters on the other hand seem to attract a very low-level of substrate and usually a very poor-quality plastic cage with so many sections it looses heat all over the place through bars and tunnels. Fine in the warm of course – but if the room this is in isn’t heated in winter, it will get VERY cold – every night.
And, unfortunately – this is why more often than not you hear of hamsters going into hibernation – or a condition often called ‘torpor’.
This happens where the animal gets so cold long-term that they think they had better hibernate (slow down their internal systems) to save energy. Something hamsters would regularly do in the wild.
However, they aren’t actually able to do it properly in homes – well efficiently enough anyway.
Is Hibernation Dangerous For Hamsters And Gerbils?
These cold critters enter an immobile and unresponsive state where they reduce all activity, bodily functions, breathing and reactions, and try not to burn through too many calories doing other things in the hope of keeping warm. They get very cold to touch – matching the room they are in.
Infact they become so cold and unresponsive that people think they have died.
They haven’t yet, of course, and after you move their enclosure into a slightly warmer place for a few hours – thankfully the poor little mite will be released from this torpor and return to normal.
If not returned to the warm, there won’t always be a happy ending. The poor hamster – not expecting this sudden cold spurt – wouldn’t have stored enough energy in their bodies or stashed enough food to last all the way through to warm weather. If they were thin or ill to start with – and you keep removing their food stash (shame on you) – this peaceful sleep could become permanent.
Thankfully – gerbils rarely ever get to this situation due to normal husbandry practices (thank goodness for that) and the fact their their bodies don’t get triggered into hibernation (you can’t get triggered into something that your body hasn’t got the instructions for).
However, they can still get very cold if not given enough nesting materials or heating – so if they are old, young or ill they can be seriously affected by this.
Ways To Prevent Your Gerbil From Hibernating:
Well, we know your gerbils can’t technically hibernate, but there are ways to make sure they stay warm enough to not be so affected by the cold – and they include any or all of the below:
Make sure your gerbils are in a lovely deep glass or wooden enclosure. Ideally this enclosure should be inside a home – not in an unheated/uninsulated garage or outhouse – and would retain heat better if it was off the ground (if the ground isn’t carpetted), out of draughts and not in darkness (daylight – especially morning and daytime light – helps to keep them active and warm). We regularly find our gerbils sunbathing in the winter sun.
Make sure your enclosure is filled with suitable substrate – and plenty of it. Deep substrate is essential for happy gerbils anyway – so this is often always something that we all do anyway – but add things to it in the colder weather so they can make deep dens and fluffy nests way down under. Also, mixing up different substrates (say, shavings, hay and long-strand paper) allows them to make the best nest THEY want – not having to sort things with what they have. Imagine if someone gives you just one upright chair and a cardigan – you will put on the cardy and sit on the chair whether it warms you up or not, eh?
Make sure they have plenty of food. A well stocked-up gerbil burrow is a good place to be when it is too cold to venture outside. In the wild, gerbils would avoid heading outside of their burrow complex in cold weather – and they often do the same in our homes when temepratures fall. So, in the wild they would stock up their special food burrow with all the best foods like a giant larder – and just raid it throughout the winter without having to go out in the cold – Mongolia can go below -40°C so you can’t blame them!
Make sure they stay ambient! By this I mean that they are always in a room that you are happy to have a just jumper on it. If you need more than a jumper in your own home – they could do with the heating on. Just like if you are too hot in your bikini indoors – they are too hot – so if you are too cold – assume they are too. They don’t need to be heated back up too much – otherwise they might not keep their nest so snug – and then when you switch the heating off – they won’t be able to rebuild it in time! Just keep them at a steady medium – not from hot to cold and back again.
Use focussed heat. Many people can’t or don’t want to heat the whole room for their gerbils – and so there are many different heat sources you can use to focus that heat onto one corner of your enclosure. Most common choices are reptile heat pads underneath or stuck on the side, snuggle safes or hot water bottles on the outsides leaning in. These only needs to be on one corner so that the gerbils can choose to move away if they get too hot and draw closer when they are colder.
Obviously gerbils cannot be allowed to touch any source of heat – or anything attached to any source of heat – so nothing on the inside of the enclosure, no cables ANYWHERE NEAR their lid or ANY cage bars, no scalding water on top of their enclosure or any bulbs or ceramic heaters. Nothing. If in doubt about its safety – don’t use it.
As always – safety first.
Anyway, hopefully you have found the answers to your questions – and we all know now that gerbils don’t hibernate – but they can get VERY cold – just like we can.