I choose gerbils over hamsters because they are not nocturnal. This means that you can see them play and run around during the day and that is really fun to see. Also gerbils prefer to live in pairs or little groups and very important: they produce very little waste. They barely drink and thus barely pee, making the cage a lot less stinky then a hamster cage. If you get a nice young gerbil that is used to be handled, it will not bite.

Therefor it is important to get a gerbil from a good breeder and not from the store, because you don’t know its age and very often they are alone in a cage in the store and that depresses them, but they are also territorial so it can be difficult to add a partner to the lonely gerbil once it has been alone for an extended period of time.