As a little introduction, I’ve decided to begin this blog with a post about pet rats, particularly my kids, Milo and Ginger.
LOVE
Domesticated rats make excellent pets. They are loyal, affectionate, intelligent, and have a range of personalities. They’re more like puppies than they are like hamsters. They can be trained to respond to their own names, to perform “tricks,” or even to use a litter box inside their cage. My rats can’t do any of those things, but that is due to my lack of patience, not their lack of intelligence. They do seem to know when I’m talking about them individually, and they respond to my kissy noises and attempts to get their attention. They naturally poop and pee in their cage and hold it in when they’re outside the cage, unless they’re kept out too long. They do mark their territory, both the boy and the girl, but they can’t help that.
Milo, a black hooded, is a former laboratory rat from Hunter College in New York City, my alma mater. Ginger, a cinnamon, came home with me months later from the pet store where I work, and was promptly spayed. If you’re wondering what it might cost to spay a rat in Brooklyn, it cost me $205. Worth every penny. She healed very quickly and not only is she spared the unnecessary trauma of ratty childbirth, but she is less likely to develop cancerous tumors in her later life.
Before I bought Ginger, I tried introducing Milo to a pair of little boy rats. Being an intact male who had grown up isolated from other rats, Milo was adamantly against bonding with them. It is not only possible, but common to successfully introduce male rats. It is easier to introduce neutered males than intact males. Sometimes, however, a rat is just not interested. And Milo was not interested. The whole time their cages were next to one another, Milo was puffed up, irritated, and hostile toward the babies. He would stare them down, hissing and breathing heavily, for 15 minutes or so at a time. After three failed attempts at introductions, I gave up, and I found the baby boys a good home with another rat lover.
In the first three and a half weeks or so that I worked at the pet store, Ginger and I bonded. When I found out we were sending our female rats to other stores due to low sales, I could not say goodbye to her. The other rats in the store were all PEW’s, or pink-eyed whites, the standard feeder variety that creep a lot of people out. How Ginger, a fancy rat, got mixed in there I still don’t know. But I fell in love with her personality.
SCIENCE
Rats are rodents. Rodents are mammals. I have heard customers say that rats, mice, or hamsters are invertebrates, or even that they have no bones, but it should be obvious that this is untrue. All mammals are chordates, as are birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes. The order rodentia is distinguished by upper and lower incisors that grow continuously. All rodents share the need to gnaw on hard materials to keep their teeth from growing too long. Most of the small animals you find at the pet store are rodents, excluding rabbits (order: lagomorpha) and ferrets (order: carnivora).
The most fascinating part of rat anatomy is the tail. The tail is used for thermoregulation (allowing heat to escape) as well as for balance (watch a rat walk the tightrope on the narrowest surface, and you’ll understand).
The tail scares people, but it’s just a hairless extension of the spine!
SOURCES AND ADDITIONAL LEARNING
