Eva's Gerbil Colours Page

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Here are a bunch of my own photos of different colours and varieties. Some of these gerbils I have owned and bred, like the dark eyed honey babies in the photo to the right, others belong to my friends.

Most of what I know about gerbil colours and gerbil genetics I have found on the Internet. Also genetics have for many years been one of my hobbies :-)

Nowadays there are many different gerbil colours to enjoy, and new colours show up now and then.

Gerbil colours can be divided in self, tipped, white-bellied, white-marked and marked varieties:

self varieties, including black, lilac, and so on.
tipped varieties, including nutmeg, argente nutmeg, and so on.
white-bellied varieties, including agouti, argente, and so on.
white-marked varieties, including patched, pied, and so on.
marked varieties, including siamese, burmese, and so on.

Genetics:

The agouti-based varieties all are white bellied, this is probably due to the agouti gene (A) they carry. Gerbils don't have the genes b or c as yet. The gene d excist but not in Sweden when I wrote these pages. Today we have the d gene in Sweden. Gerbils have both c^b and c^h, e and e^f, and also g and p. The gene c^b can also be written c^chm, where chm stands for chinchilla medium.

The white-marked varieties are based on two different genes, Sp and W. Sp is semi-lethal.