Personally, I do not believe the term "gender" is applicable to rodents. They are obviously able to distinguish between sexually attractive and sexually neutral cospecifics, but they are not capable of reasoning on their own sexuality. I regard we should simply use the term "sex" for rodents.

i am agree with Raffaele. Additionally we first should know that in rodent conscious perception is present. Next conscious perception of their own body is present and then we can looking for answer on your question.

The term "gender" refers to the social identity of a person which is derived from their physical sex and sexual behaviour. It isn't just consciousness of being male or female, but the adoption of many other socially decided behaviours based on the individual's sex.

I don't believe that the term "gender" can be applied to any species without significant social constraints on behaviour, humans very likely being the only such species. Even within humans, "gender identity" is decided differently between cultures, some being an individual, ego-centric decision about sexuality, and others defining gender in terms of your relationships with others.

Sorry, I got a bit off topic there, but my point is that "gender" is a complicated result of sex influencing identity among complex societies. Hamsters and rats probably don't have these.

Rodents are gender conscious. They can distinguish male from female. Male hardly have sexual admiration for female. As it was with human being, the have sexual orientation.

Dear Aderoju, rodents are surely able to distinguish between a male and a female cospecific, but this does not mean that they are gender conscious. As Michal pointed out, we do not even know if conscious perception is present at all in rodents. Mice and rats are without doubt endowed with the capacity to process olfactory, auditory and visual sexual stimuli, but the concept of "gender" is far more complex than biological sex or overt sexual behaviour.

Thank you all for your enlightening discussions.