rat tail colors/texture?

Advertise with us
Shop with us on Ebay
Fins us on Amazon
The Rat Shack Forum

Help Support The Rat Shack Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
S

September555

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 2, 2007
Messages
209
Location
Kansas City, Missouri.
This seems silly but I was curious...are most rat tails like the pigment in their skin? Well...to better word that...why are some rat tails brown and dark and others are pale and pink and some are multi colored brown and pink etc. and some are super soft and others are super scaly? I have several rats before (only one or two at a time) but the tails have all been different. I am sure the pigment in their skin has something to do with it...but I have seen pure white rats with dark tails and dark rats with bright pink tails etc. Like my girls the lighter one has a soft light colored tail and my darker one has a course brownish tail.
 
There's definitely some colour in the tail. Also, keep in mind, if rattie doesn't clean his/her tail, it does get dirty adding it's own colour. lol
 
I cannot seem to keep my ratties tails clean! i take a warm cloth and wipe it, but i used to use a soft tooth brush to clean it. But then i realized theirr tails are quit sensitive. So now i use A warm cloth. Works alright, doesnt get some of the staines out, but it cleans it somewhat. also they shed their scales off their tales almost every month. So you will notice patches of clean scales and random dirty ones, this is because of the shedding the scales thing. :roll: rats are complex little creatures.
 
I've always found my girls have cleaner tails as well. Theirs are actually pink! My boys tails.. who knows what the real colour is, they think its fun to drag their tails through everything :roll:
 
haha ewww...ok...so most likely the brown spots on my girls tails are.....poop and just dirtyness?? I kiss their tails!! Maybe I am miss reading this...but so the brownish blotches on their tails are not just pigments of their skin...but most likely dirty? haha.
 
But the good news is that it must be clean dirt!! After all, September is still alive and well and posting on the Rat Shack.... :lol:

I kiss their tails, too. That is, unless I've just seen them being dipped in something unsavoury...
 
As for girls having clean tails? LOLOL Angel and Megan my PEW Bronling girls were filthy. filthy tails, rough, ungroomed fur...Only recently have they started grooming themselves and have soft white fur again...I called them My Nasty Gals. LOL

And then there's my clean neutered boys, all of them carefully groom the tail. :D

There's a routine for grooming that I have heard about recently...

Start with the head, scrub scrub over it
Then the turn and groom their side
Then they groom their belly, etc
And lastly is the tail...most rats stop their grooming routine before this or only do part of the tail before stopping. :roll:

If you have a clean tail you have a nicely compulsive groomer :D
 
lilspaz68 said:
There's a routine for grooming that I have heard about recently...

Start with the head, scrub scrub over it
Then the turn and groom their side
Then they groom their belly, etc
And lastly is the tail...most rats stop their grooming routine before this or only do part of the tail before stopping. :roll:

If you have a clean tail you have a nicely compulsive groomer :D
Click to expand...

That's exactly it!!!!!! Mine never do their tail. I saw Hazel quickly groom Rubys tail once. I still kiss it.
 
lilspaz68 said:
As for girls having clean tails? LOLOL Angel and Megan my PEW Bronling girls were filthy. filthy tails, rough, ungroomed fur...Only recently have they started grooming themselves and have soft white fur again...I called them My Nasty Gals. LOL
Click to expand...

Lol, It totally does depend on the individual rats :lol: Considering 8/10 girls I have are related, I'm not surprised that they keep their tails clean like their mother and aunt. My other two girls clean their tails as well luckily, but I've had girls in the past who could care less how dirty their tails are. Apparently their tails don't count as part of their body for cleaning routine :lol:
 
My Corrie arrived with a dirty tail; she'd been living in awful conditions before SQ and Nefarous rescued her. A month later and her tail was spotless.

It always surprises me when they allow their tails to trail through a plate of yogurt or cereal!
 
Woohoo found something :)

Cephalocaudal groom ("CCG"): Grooming sequence of face and body (common to all rodents). The rat starts by licking the paws, then rubs them over the head. This is followed by licking and rubbing the side of the body, the anogenital region, and the tail. The sequence may be anywhere from loosely organized to very stylized, performed in a similar or identical fashion each time. In rats, most sequences appear to be loosely organized. The grooming sequence may be interrupted at any point, and it seems that rats usually stop before grooming their tails.

Its on ratbehavior.org but I would never have known about the cephalocaudal grooming until I was informed by a wonderful person :)
 
I have three girls with the nastiest tales ever Clover, Ivy and Flower the underneath of their tails are so caked with stuff that it never really comes all the way off. I usually make them sit in the tub of warm water for awhile and then I use a towel and rub their tale butt to tip with the direction of the scales. They still stay dirty. I have noticed that my girls with the light colored tails keep their very clean. I see, Lilly, my oldest Hooded blue clean her tail all the time and she keeps her nails very short. I wish she would teach this to the rest to save my skin from all the scratches.

Clover has a black tail with a white tip and the underneath is brown so I know it is dirt. Ivy has a dark pink tail so I know it is dirty and Flower has a brown tail(pigment) but you can just see the nastiness on it.

I think it comes from their wheel they like to poop in it and run so they get it smashed in the wheel and then drag their tails through it.
 
All of my rats keep their tails beautifully clean, thank goodness, but Mariusz has the most gosh-awful ugly tail in the world! We love it! it is hairy, brown, longer hair, long, and just plain man-ratish!! I'll upload a picture to show you!

Mariusz's ugly man-rat tail:
IMG_3828.jpg


Magnus' ugly man-rat tail:
IMG_3834-1.jpg


Magnus has a very clean tail, but the brown hairs on it make it look horrible! Not nearly as horrible as Mariusz's, mind you! LOL!!
 
When I bathed the boys, their tails were so spotless! Now they're starting to get dirty again. I've contemplated cleaning them again (just their tails, not bathing them all over again) with the shampoo, then giving them a once-over with a facecloth to keep them clean.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top