What Is Gerbils Lifespan?

Gerbils, as pets, live on average between 2.5 and 4 years of age, but as high as 8 if you are to believe some of the stories?

A breeder I know says they regularly top 4 years of age with their line of gerbils, but generally 4 is the uppermost age limit for most other gerbils – and a ‘great age’ when accomplished.

Unlike rats, mice and hamsters, gerbils can really have a good long healthy life.

Also, unlike those other rodents – gerbils should be considered suitable for more veterinary treatments due to their longer time with us.  Avoiding an operation on a 1.5 year old rat may make perfect sense – but a similar aged gerbil would be more than healthy enough to comfortably survive surgery and live long enough afterwards to make it worthwhile.

In the wild – the average age of a gerbil is based not on how long they can live for but on how long they can survive for – so an average age of 2 is about the size of it.  Just like the commonly quoted average age of a cat (out of all cats) being only 1 year old (as so many of them die as kittens on the road).  

The average age of a surviving cat would be around 10-14 with some winners out there at 38 years old!!! (Well done Creme Puff from Texas)

So how long can gerbils live?

We don’t know how long a gerbil can theoretically live for in captivity, as every animal’s’ body can only do so much.  We also don’t know if we are missing something really important from their diet or habitat that could extend their lifespans further.

Also, it is really difficult to breed for longevity of course.  You don’t know which gerbils will live to be really old until they ARE really old – and then they are so old that they aren’t fertile anymore?  

All breeders can do is work from the other end – avoid breeding from gerbils that have issues themselves or are known to have relatives with health issues.  

Many long-term pet breeders and show breeders work very hard to eliminate such characteristics as many of these may well be hereditary.  

Certain illnesses are more common in some areas than in others, so it is believed that many common illnesses could be passed down from parents the children.  Something definitely worth avoiding if you can.

However, many accidental litters or one-off litters are born these days that go against this completely –  perhaps a good reason not to breed from a gerbil who was from an accidental litter themselves?

Why is a gerbil lifespan so variable?

The reason for this is very complicated, but basically it comes down to genetics and diet.  

If you have a good line of gerbils – a line being a related family of gerbils bred from known stock over a long period of time – and have bred this line with health in mind then your gerbils may well live longer than average – on average (there will always be exceptions).

If you feed your gerbils a balanced diet – based on the best facts you can find and keeping the protein levels under control and making sure the fat is high enough can prevent or delay health issues down the line – you should get the best out of your individual gerbils.  

Having the most suitable bedding materials, habitat environment as well as a variety of fresh vegetables and some hay can also add to the list of things that can go right for you and your pets.

The best diets to buy or make are those used or recommended by long-term breeders as well as those people who show their gerbils.  The reason being that they will have had hundreds of gerbils over their lifetime and so would have seen trends and run trials to find the best diets and bedding etc.  

They need healthy, long-lived gerbils in their kennel otherwise they wouldn’t be very successful breeders would they?  Surely they have put the effort in and so should have some pretty decent advice worth following.

How do you find a healthy line?

You need to find a good breeder for starters.

Keeping a line healthy includes keeping many of your own stock yourself as it ages so you can see things develop.  It also means keeping records of ailments and behaviours along the way to tally up data over time.  

Most illness in gerbils only become visible to us humans later in life and so a breeder who sells ALL their pups will never be able to say that they have a healthy line – as they haven’t kept any long enough to see what may go ‘wrong’ as the years add up.  Young pups rarely show signs of heart failure or a propensity to grow scent gland tumours.

Common illness in gerbils which take a year or more to flourish include strokes, scent gland tumours, ovarian cysts (image below) and heart failure – and so without keeping in contact with at least some of your adult gerbils, you won’t know whether these common problems are prevalent in your lines.

And it goes without saying that a gerbil from an accidental litter or a one-off litter or two probably won’t have this same history attached – you really won’t know anything about them.  They could live for 6 months or 6 years – it will be pot luck entirely on that gerbils lifespan?

It wouldn’t surprise me though if Creme Puff was a street moggie – individuals are totally different to the population as a whole – and can buck the trend.  However, what we needs is a real multi-generational trend in longevity.

Healthy longevity. 

This is what gerbil breeders are aiming for.