Aren't rats amazing? No? Well, come along as I look into why having a rat friend might serve you better than having a human friend (particularly if you like chocolate); learning about the Jacques Cousteau of the rat world; and how our pandemic behavior affects rats -- and Duchess the owl!
There is a nasty side to rats, particularly males attacking young, but there is also a sweet side. I had a few feeder rats as pets and they are quite affectionate, they make good pets. This was a great read, as usual.
Thanks! This was the post that had the most outtakes for me by far. And some of that's because I'm probably still not quite up to snuff, but some of it is just because rats are just so freaking complicated. Anyway, I realized just after I posted that some of the material I left on the cutting room floor was about the dark side of rats and I had actually meant to bring it back in -- ooops. But the gist is that, yeah, it's so weird that they go from being the stuff of Winston Smith's nightmares in 1984 to pets to the animals that we test on presumably because they're so similar to us ... they're just really weird animals. Anyway, thanks again!
The fact that there are uptown, midtown and downtown rats in Manhattan is worth the price of admission to this piece all by itself. Next study that needs to be done - do rats in different parts of the country exhibit different degrees of pro-social behavior?
Oh, that would be such a cool experiment. Do they have different cultures? Different manners? I think they're doing these kinds of observational studies in whales and finding that different populations of whales do have different cultures, so maybe rats do too.
Haha. Deepsqeak. Haha!
I *know*! I just couldn't let Deepsqueek go without a mention. :)
There is a nasty side to rats, particularly males attacking young, but there is also a sweet side. I had a few feeder rats as pets and they are quite affectionate, they make good pets. This was a great read, as usual.
Thanks! This was the post that had the most outtakes for me by far. And some of that's because I'm probably still not quite up to snuff, but some of it is just because rats are just so freaking complicated. Anyway, I realized just after I posted that some of the material I left on the cutting room floor was about the dark side of rats and I had actually meant to bring it back in -- ooops. But the gist is that, yeah, it's so weird that they go from being the stuff of Winston Smith's nightmares in 1984 to pets to the animals that we test on presumably because they're so similar to us ... they're just really weird animals. Anyway, thanks again!
The fact that there are uptown, midtown and downtown rats in Manhattan is worth the price of admission to this piece all by itself. Next study that needs to be done - do rats in different parts of the country exhibit different degrees of pro-social behavior?
Oh, that would be such a cool experiment. Do they have different cultures? Different manners? I think they're doing these kinds of observational studies in whales and finding that different populations of whales do have different cultures, so maybe rats do too.