baby gerbil

Question
i have a five week old female gerbil who has still not opened her eyes. she is from a 2nd litter of two , her brother opened his eyes at 17 days .the first litter of 6 had no problems and all opened their eyes around 17 days.
i think she will have red eyes like her dad ,is it normal for red eyes to take  longer  to open as the rest of her development is quiet normal. the parents have now been split so no more babies.she is the same colour as her dad honey with red eyes .her brother and mother are both the original gerbil colour .

Answer
Hi Jill.

The only difference between mammals that have red eyes and mammals with any other color eyes is that the red eyes have no pigment in them - which means we can see the light reflecting off of the blood vessels in the eye, which gives them the red look.  They should open their eyes at around the same age, no matter what the color of the eye is.

So something else is going on with your five week old female who still hasn't opened her eyes.  What that might be, I could only guess (and my guess would be a genetic defect of some sort), so your best bet would be to take her to a veterinarian to see exactly what's up.

I hope everything goes okay!  Please feel free to ask me any other questions you may have.