Kira was freaking out last night-can rats have panic attacks

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bruxxy

bruxxy

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2007
Messages
668
Location
Toronto
Right now I have my manrat Lyric at my house (who is usually with my boyfriend) who is in the same room as my girls. So naturally everyone is super curious about him cause most of them have never really seen a manrat. I've let everyone go up to the cage and check him out and everyone seemed fine. Then last night, my 8 month old girl Kira went up to the cage and started acting really dominant towards Lyric. Then Kira's sister went onto the cage and Kira attcked her. I grabbed Kira and held on to her and she started to panic. So I put her on the bed and she started acting like a scared unsocialized rat...darting away from my hand and squeaking alot. I picked her up again and she started struggling alot on my hands and squeaking and looking like she was having some kind of nervous breakdown or panic attack :shock: what the hell happend to her??!?!?!? btw this all happend within 2 mins.
 
You scared her. Kira was in the middle of either trying to impress Lyric or show him who's boss, and her sister interfered. Kira, in a right state, was letting her know to back off. Then you grabbed her when all of her attention was focused on her sister and Lyric. Reaching out and grabbing rats when they're stressed like that can lead to very nasty bites, as well.
 
Ya thats a really good idea. I'll move his cage on top of the book shelf which is too high for my girls to get to. I guess I didn't realize my girls would fight over him.
 
The reaction that you discribed is the same reaction that my Baby Girl gets if you try to scruff her. She FLIPS out! We have no idea what it is but the best thing we can do is to just not scruff her... Even told the vet office not to and they told us we weren't doing it right. Spent the next 10 minutes trying to calm her down so that we could even TOUCH her without her screaming at the top of her lungs and flying away at top speed. I honestly think that rats can have panic attacks... If Kira's was one or not I don't know, but if everyone thinks that you just startled her then that's probably what happened. But to answer if they can have panic attacks, I think that answer is "yes". That or Baby Girl is just a Spaz! :roll: :lol:
 
I did have one rat, my Moose, he did got into panic attacks. He would go crazy, running, crashing into his cage, literally moving the cage from the force of him. Trying to catch him to calm him down was hard. But when did, I would wrap him in a towel and allow him to bite down on it, was the only way to settle him. I really thought he'd die each time from the stress.
So rats do go into a panic, there's no doubt about that.
 

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