Gerbils In The News: H1N1 & Gerbils

You may have read recently about cats and ferrets contracting the H1N1 flu. According to this article at NewsWest9.com, gerbils and other pocket pets are also susceptible to H1N1.

If this story is true, what does it mean for our beloved gerbils?

Continue to wash your hands both before and after handling your gerbils. Because our gerbils don’t typically leave our homes, we are not likely to contract H1N1 from our gerbils. Our gerbils are much more likely to contract the flu from us.

It’s good practice to wash our hands before and after handling our gerbils anyway. There are the obvious health reasons, but also, because gerbils recognize each other by scent, it’s important to wash hands to ensure that gerbils don’t smell other gerbils, perfume, etc. on our hands. (Foreign smells can cause two gerbils to fight.)

For the reasons listed above, for years, I’ve kept a bottle of hand sanitizer next to each of my gerbils’ tanks, and I’ve used it before and after handling my gerbils.

If H1N1 can be transmitted between humans and gerbils, keeping hand sanitizer next to each gerbil tank has even more value.