Rat misinformation

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xio

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2009
Messages
270
Location
New Brunswick
I'm sure you've all heard ridiculous things that people swear are true about rats. Like how they carry the plague and other such illnesses. The most... astonishing one I heard was a man who claimed rats lived 5 years on average and how his oldest lived until the age of 7. I was shocked and couldn't think of anything to say. Of course this man was breeding :wallbang:

Anyone else want to share things that people have "informed" them of?

Hopefully this is the right place to post this! If not feel free to delete/move :)
 
If you want your rat to love you more, only get one. If you get more than one they wont bond to you.
This is true of parakeets... but NOT rats.

Dumbo rats are a different species than standard eared.... That one always makes me laugh. I get people that come in and are like "Do you know anything about dumbo rats?" and I'm like "I know a lot about rats" and they are like, "but do you know about dumbo rats" and every thing I tell them is "but is that true for dumbo rats too?"
 
"wild rats live on garbage so a rat's diet can be anything and they'll be ok"
(this was said by a vet :wallbang: )

I've heard the one about the single rat bonding with you more, so untrue.

That's funny about dumbos being a different species, never heard that one before

I know when I was first learning about rats and the difference between domesticated and wild rats, I kept coming across the term "fancy rat" and thought that was the way to make the distinction, so I would proudly tell people that I didn't have wild rats, I had "fancy ones" :laugh4:

see, mine aren't plain ol rats, they are FANCY ones

guess it just sounded so much more exotic than "domesticated" and avoided the inevitable question about how that wild rat was tamed so it could be a pet...
 
Fancy rat is a pet store term... That way they can charge more for the ones with fancy markings... and sell the rest as feeders :( Petco used to do that, and then PETA threw a fit, and so now they are all just sold by size.
 
xio said:
The most... astonishing one I heard was a man who claimed rats lived 5 years on average and how his oldest lived until the age of 7. I was shocked and couldn't think of anything to say. Of course this man was breeding :wallbang:
Click to expand...

Hum... I believe this actually used to be true - long time rat lovers, please correct me if I'm wrong! I heard that about 10 to 15 years ago, 5 year-old rats actually existed, and 2 people actually told me about rats they owned that lived to be 7 years old at the time. One of these people used to work in a petshop that was selling animals, but was working in another one where they only sell fish when I talked to her. The other one was a girl at the vet office on Monday... Looks like this guy is selling very outdated information...
 
I've heard a lot of stories of the fabled 5-year-old rats as well, all from people who had them as kids 10-20 years ago. Interestingly these fabled rats also always lived alone, but had free range of the house (sometimes even outside, like an indoor-outdoor cat) and were apparently enormous. I've yet to figure that one out.
 
It does happen on occasion where you get a rat that lives for like 5 years, but any breeder that claims their average rats life expectancy is 5 years is just flat wrong. I've seen breeders that claim their rats are superior because of this.
 
I do know of a fellow rat lover who had a rat live to 5 years but that was ages ago.

I don't think I'd believe 7 years though. People like to add years when they talk of their childhood pets.
 
handmeafish said:
If you want your rat to love you more, only get one. If you get more than one they wont bond to you.
This is true of parakeets... but NOT rats.
Click to expand...
Not trying to thread hijack but I do not agree with this. Parakeets are extremely social animals and it is cruel to keep them individually. They will bond more readily with a human if they are by themselves but only because they are so starved for attention and interaction. The myth that parakeets won't bond with people if there's more then one is completely false, just like with rats.
 
I have read that the oldest pet rat lived 7 years.
This is suposed to be an unusual, documented case.

We are all aware that pet rats used to live much longer then they do now .... 3, 4, or 5 years not being unusual.
While people now say the average life span seems to be around 2 years or slightly over 2 years
 
My Bennigan lived to five years, but just barely. He was an odd case, after him I never had a Pip live nearly as long, though he was my first rat, so after him when my other guys started dying off so young (or so I thought), 3 at the most, I was pretty freaked out, thinking I had some sort of disease in my colony.


My personal favorite is when people hear I have pet rats, they automatically assume that my house is filthy. Because "Rats are disgusting animals!" PUH-lease.
 
My favorite is: "Why do you have rats?" or "What do you do with pet rats?" I don't know...what do you do with dogs or cats or any other pet? Feed them, clean up after them, play with them, snuggle with them, etc. You share your lives with them.

Although, I guess while lots of these questions\notions about pet rats seem stupid to us now, it's important to remember that we all had to learn this stuff at one point too. There were points in all our lives where we were just as clueless about rats as the average person.
 
Bamboo said:
handmeafish said:
If you want your rat to love you more, only get one. If you get more than one they wont bond to you.
This is true of parakeets... but NOT rats.
Click to expand...
Not trying to thread hijack but I do not agree with this. Parakeets are extremely social animals and it is cruel to keep them individually. They will bond more readily with a human if they are by themselves but only because they are so starved for attention and interaction. The myth that parakeets won't bond with people if there's more then one is completely false, just like with rats.
Click to expand...

Parakeet is a pretty broad term that represents a large number of bird species - it depends on the type of bird. Some of them are much happier alone and usually fight each other if caged together, but then others are more like rats and are much happier in pairs or trios. As an example, budgerigars fall into the "happier when together" category and become very depressed when alone (like rats tend to,) but lineolated parakeets are just as happy to be alone, if not moreso, and can end up fighting their cagemates.

I could be wrong on this one, but I thought "fancy" was the term used in countries where rats are shown, to indicate a rat with known heritage?

I think the most messed up thing I was ever told about my rats, is that rats shouldn't be caged together because they'll eat each other...

Less messed up but still stupid as heck, that degus are "the exact same thing as rats," so my rats should live to seven or eight-years-old, like my friend's fiance's degus did.
 
Sorry, yes, I should have clarified: I was talking about budgerigars. (Around here, the term "parakeet" is pretty much exclusively referencing budgerigars, unless you're talking to another hardcore bird keeper...but still, that's no excuse for being vague. I should have been more clear)
 
To clarify further the man who claimed his rats live 5 years bred for snake food, had them in tiny hamster cages, was breeding siblings and his rats were filthy. He also bred rabbits, snakes, hamsters and natal rats :p

I hate the myth that lone rats will bond better with people. I hear it so often.
 
I get the "but what do you DO with them?" comment a lot from some of my coworkers, usually older folks. I think it must hail from the generational belief that animals should be useful in some way -- protecting your house or killing mice or whatever. I think people from more recent generations just tend to accept that pets are pets.

I had a friend in college who was a rat enthusiast who often remarked that rats are ultimately one of the most bourgeois pets we can have. Only in a well-established, affluent country can you actually afford to keep rats...instead of competing with them the way we did throughout years of development as primitive humans :rofl:
 
My sister thought their tails grew back after they fell off!

I told her she had them mixed up with geckos. She would certainly never have sliced one off to check.
 

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