telling the difference

[sutherland]

i know the seems strange but i have three degus but i cant tell the differance between them! i say that, one has lost the end of her tail ( she is called tipsy) so i know who she is, but sandy and frisky, i cant tell .
are there any induvidual features degus have because the colour of them is all the same i dont know.

any help?

[momof5furryboys1fuzzygirl]

Ha, ha, ha! This is how I felt last week. Finally one day I just sat and watched them at a point in the day when they weren't so active and I realized they do all have different coloring on their faces. They all have brown noses, but one has a black spot by his eye, one has a black line between his eyes, etc. The funniest is I was identifying one by the dark spot near his nose, which turned out to be water and dried. LOL! When they are all running around I still have a hard time figuring out who is who, but now I can tell somewhat by their personalities, Ash always greets me, Austin sits inside the food dish and is VERY protective of his food, Ace and Axle are the runners.
HTH!
Karen

[pinkpiglet]

Our male has a bushier tail, one o fthe females has a strange nick in one of her ears and the other one just look generic. It is tough to tell sometimes when they are moving around quickly though.

[sutherland]

hehehe

i thought i had it sussed untill like you found the patch on her back was sand from her sand bath lol thanks for the responces so quike

[sarah]

At first we couldn't tell Buddy and Blossom apart, but after getting to know them we can tell a difference in their behavior. The 3 babies are another story -- they all look and act EXACTLY the same!!!

[ilovemydegus]

I'm quite lucky with my two because they have very dry tails, Basil's tail is worse than brush's but also Basil is smaller so it's quite easy to tell them apart.

[laurieb]

Right now, ours are easy! Lilly is about 7 years pregnant, Milly is the middle-size one, with hair missing from between her shoulder blades, because of Lilly's over grooming, and Willy is as skinny as a stick (especially beside his pregnant sister(s)! Willy's shoulder blade hair is mostly gone, too. He looks really odd. I'm hoping that Lilly is just stressed from the pregnancy, and over grooming her family. May stop once the pups are here.

[gooey]

heehee, like peas in a pod some days!!! ;D
Tiki is the one who will come out to visit, and Tino has a small stripe across the front of his nose. also Tino has a small hole in his right ear, actually looks like someone pierced his ear, although i think Tiki may have been slightly overzealous in his grooming
in the avatar pic, Tiki is the one on the left with the corn piece in his mouth (such a greedy little degu

[sutherland]

hehehe

now after some of the markings you have been mentioning i have had a closer look and found that sandy has a black (pure black dont know how i missed it!) stripe aross and friskey has a y shape between her ears

[ra]

They are difficult to tell apart. Mocha chews the hair off of her forepaws. Tanzania has bald patches right in front of her ears. Really have to look at them to see the difference. There are behavioural differences. Mocha will grab as many sunflower seeds as she can carry and takes them back into the cage to eat. Tanzania will sit, holding my hand down with one back paw and delicately eat one at a time. However if the two of them are vying for food, Tanzania is most food aggressive, squeeling and growling and pushing her mom out of the way. Mocha prefers the running wheel for a nap while Tanzania likes the hammock.