Keeping and Caring for Pet Rats

Rats are intelligent and social animals that can make wonderful pets. They are also easily tamed, making rats especially great for someone who likes to handle their pets.

To learn how to care for them, click here: Keeping and Caring for Pet Rats

How to Clicker Train Your Pet Rat

The domestic rat is a descendant of the wild brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) and has been bred as a pet for about a hundred years. Pet rats are much less fearful than their wild cousins, and when handled gently, they quickly learn to enjoy riding on their human friends’ shoulders and napping in their laps.

Rats like to please their people, are natural problem solvers and hate being bored. So both you and your rats should enjoy the process of teaching them to do tricks. Your rats will probably think they are successfully training you. As well as enhancing the quality of their lives, training your rats will build the bond between you. And you'll look cool showing off to non-rat owners what your little furry companions can do.

Are There Dangers In Keeping Pet Rats?

There are very few dangers of keeping pet rats, but only if those rats are domesticated and kept in cages. Rats that have ever been wild may carry a number of diseases that can be transmitted to humans. When the animals have never lived in the wild, the dangers of getting a disease from them are nearly eradicated. Even so, humans should not handle rodents that may have a disease if there is any risk of transmission.

While rats can carry many different diseases, ones kept as pet very rarely have any way of catching them. Diseases may be spread through bites and scratches and occasionally through contact on the skin. It is possible for a rat to carry a disease that is hazardous to humans without showing any symptoms, making it difficult to judge whether the animal is safe to handle. The best way for a pet owner to avoid getting sick is to keep his rats healthy and clean.

Rats that run around freely in a house are much more dangerous than those kept in cages. Diseases can be carried by rat urine and feces, which rats often drop wherever they walk. Also, because rats can get urine and feces on their feet, it is possible for a person to get sick from handling one and touching her face or food without washing her hands.

Other than diseases, the dangers of keeping pet rats are similar to those of keeping other pets. Rats can bite or scratch, and they can be aggressive if handled or raised improperly. Most are relatively small, meaning that the capacity of a rat to injure a human is likely less than that of a dog. Even so, bites can be painful and can get seriously infected, so it is not a good idea to touch or handle a rat unless it is familiar.

Most concerns over the dangers of keeping rats as pets are related to the history of wild rats spreading disease, not to domesticated rats. Not only are domesticated ones unlikely to spread diseases, but their diet and natural behaviors might even make them safer than animals like cats and dogs. Even so, a rat that looks sick or that has been out in the wild for any period of time should be inspected by a veterinarian. When they do spread diseases, those diseases have a tendency to be serious and are not always easy to diagnose because they are often rare.

Tiny Thanksgiving for a Tiny Hamster and His Tiny Friends

It's the time of the year to give thanks, and out today is something we're extremely grateful for: another tiny hamster eating tiny foods video. This one is themed for Thanksgiving and features all your Turkey Day favorites.

The food, eaten by one extremely fuzzy bunny, two hamsters and one rat, was all safe for animals to consume, according to the creators of the video.

To see the video, click here: Tiny Thanksgiving for a Tiny Hamster and His Tiny Friends

Dayton, Ohio - More Than 200 Pet Rats Were Removed from an Ohio Apartment After Their Owner was Evicted.

More than 200 pet rats were removed from an Ohio apartment after their owner was evicted.

Animal control officers who rescued the rodents on Thursday said some were in cages while others roamed free and were living in holes in the walls and inside a mattress. They said the smell was 'awful'.

The rodents' owner, John, contacted the Humane Society of Greater Dayton after he was evicted from his Kettering studio and could no longer care for them.

"They make great pets for children. They are very durable and they are very sweet and very nice; however, you don’t want to have 200 of them," animal officer Sheila Marquis told Dayton Daily News.

"What becomes a problem is, you have one or two and with small pocket pets like that, if you don’t spay and neuter, they breed quite rapidly."

Marquis said the rats begin breeding at three-months-old and have litters of 13 or more several times a year.

She said no charges are expected because the owner reached out for help and the rodents were well cared for.

The owner's neighbor Darryl Tucker said the man loved his pets.
"And you know, he just chose to raise rats. He’s real close to his rats, he can tell you anything about them," he said.

Feral: More than 200 pet rats were rescued from a Kettering apartment in suburban Dayton, Ohio on Thursday.

Rescuer: Sheila Marquis, an animal officer from Humane Society of Greater Dayton, worked with a team to remove more than 200 pet rats from an awful-smelling Ohio apartment.

      Breed rapidly: Humane Society of Greater Dayton said there might even be as many as 300 of the rats.