Gerbilling

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The satirical animated television series South Park depicted gerbilling in the 2002 episode "The Death Camp of Tolerance", in which a gerbil known as Lemmiwinks falls victim to the practice.

Gerbilling also known as gerbil stuffing or gerbil shooting refers to the insertion of small animals, usually gerbils but also mice and hamsters, into the rectum to stimulate the prostate as in anal sex. Gerbilling is unknown as an actual sexual practice. Despite apparently widespread public belief and persistent rumours, especially in the 1980s, no verified medical evidence of gerbilling exists, and its status is that of an urban legend.

Gerbilling also has an alternate meaning, associated with monowheels, referring to the rider losing her or his normal position in the bottom of the wheel and instead spinning around the inside uncontrollably. This sense is derived from gerbil wheels.

Medical literature, which covers examples of items retrieved from patients' rectums in extreme detail, has never recorded a case of an animal being removed from a patient, nor of damage inflicted on a patient's insides due to rectal insertion of an animal. False rumors surrounding various male celebrities engaging in gerbilling have become popular urban legends over the years.

According to the Urban Legends Reference Pages (Snopes):

The notion of gerbilling (not necessarily restricted to homosexuals — the insertion of items into the rectum for purposes of autoeroticism is practiced by heterosexuals as well) appears to be pure invention, a tale fabricated to demonstrate the depravity with which "faggots" allegedly pursue sexual pleasure.

The lack of medical evidence for gerbilling is surprising when one considers that rodents have claws, and frightened animals are likely to bite.

Pop Culture

• In the last verse of "Fack" by Eminem he raps about gerbilling, repeating the line Shove a gerbil in your ass through a tube four times.
• Half way through Electric Six's "Gay Bar" video a gerbil is shown running through a plastic tube.
• Roddy Bottum, keyboardist for the rock group Faith No More, would describe gerbil stuffing in graphic detail to shocked interviewers.
• The comical minstrel Stephen Lynch published a song entitled "Gerbil", wherein he sang of a fictitious misadventure about this particular phenomenon.
• The 1987 Dayglo Abortions album Here Today, Guano Tomorrow includes a song about gerbilling called "Hide the Hamster".
• In the episode of South Park titled "The Death Camp of Tolerance", Mr. Garrison's class gerbil is put into Mr. Slave's anus through a heated glass tube. This gerbil, named Lemmiwinks, is guided out of Mr. Slave's intestinal tract by other small animals that have died inside.
• The album Farmyard Filth by The Tiger Lillies includes a song about gerbilling (or in this case, hamstering) entitled "Hamsters".
• The opening of the film "Mallrats" talks about one of the main character's cousins continously purchasing cats to attempt to retrieve a gerbil from his anus.

See also

• Rectal foreign object
• Felching
• The Death Camp of Tolerance
• Gerbil

External links

• Full snopes article
• An urban legend from the Darwin Awards
• The Straight Dope: Is it true what they say about gerbils?
• MSNBC article on gerbilling rumor also contains video, both are halfway down the page