Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / March 2007

Oh, I've got a few...
Here's one,
I adopted an old rat from young people that were breeding him to supply
our local evil pet store. This old rat was kept in a small cage, no toys
no hammocks. So when I got him home, he was put in a huge two level
home, with lots of toys and hammocks... and a corner litter tray. At
first he seems upset with the corner litter tray. He would always go up
to it and try to move it around and he would puff up at the site of it.
So I ended up taking it out. Out of quarantine, I was going to put my
old girl Bijou with him for company. Bijou is litter trained so I had to
put the litter tray back in his cage. As soon as Mister saw Bijou use
the litter tray, he started to use it. Now both of them are keeping
their cage nice and clean. :)

I have tonnes of stories, including ones where rats looked after
ailing cagemates by bringing them food, and 'peace keeping' rats who
would intervene with bullying.

One situation I will always remember was when I taught two boys, Magic
and Totem, to give me kisses for a treat.  I started with Magic, who
was at the door of his cage, and Totem watched from a higher level.  I
would ask Magic for a kiss, he would bump his nose against my lips,
and he would get the treat.  It took me less than five minutes to
train him to do this.
After we had it down pat, and I had done it a few times, Totem ran
down the ramp to the door of the cage and immediately bumped my lips
for a treat.  I never once had to 'train' Totem directly, he learned
from watching me teach his brother.  Learning by example and
observation is not something that you find animals doing that often.
That whole exercise with Magic and Totem took me less than ten
minutes, and they performed that 'trick' for the rest of their lives,
even when I didn't always have a treat for them.
More recently I had a very old boy come into my home.  He was very
near the end of his life, probably between two and two and a half
years old.  His entire life he drank out of a water dish and was never
given a water bottle.  When he lived alone here, I had both a bottle
and dish in his cage and he never once used the bottle only the dish.
Within a couple of hours of having him live with a cagemate, for the
first time in his life, he observed his cagemate drinking from the
bottle and started doing it himself.  I was able to remove the water
dish within half a day of them living together.
They have a huge capacity to observe and very quickly learn behaviours
from their fellow rats.  That is yet another reason why it is so very
important to have them living with their own kind.  Very often putting
a rat with less than ideal social behaviour in with rats that are very
social, will result in the anti social rat adopting the more social
nature of their cagemates.  Not always, but my experience has been
that very often it will.
I wonder if you could get the same results from a rat by training
another animal?  Like having your rats observe you training a dog to
do a trick (that both animals were capable of doing), and seeing if
they will make the association with the dog the same way that they
make that association with other rats?  If they did, I think that
would really be brilliant.

well this week as my ratties are now growing like weeds... *I have to take a
few more pics and post them*... peanut butter and jelly often get runabout
time on my mega huge coffee table, however one day my dog was sniffing
peanut butter and shoved him off of the coffee table... THEN he found the
'under the couch funness!!'... so the next few times he was on the
coffeetable I noticed him deliberately hanging around the dog to be sniffed
off the table...

which did happen as my pup wants to play but she knows she can't just pick
them up so she nudges and sniffs them with her nose...

he did eventually learn that if he 'falls' *it doesn't quite look like a
jump which he's good at in his cage* onto my slippers he has happy under the
couch play time...

but he won't try it himself yet...!!  if he can't fall onto my slipper he
won't try it without the dog...

once he's bigger, I'm sure he'll jump down himself... *G*

but yeah training is easy, I will give peanut butter a bananna chip and
he'll take it down to the main level of the cage and jelly will be following
him until he hears me tapping another bananna chip against the cage on top
where I gave peanut butter his treat.  I call his name and I've noticed that
he's becomming a lot more responsive to his name now... its cute...

Not long after we got Chewie, we gave her a strawberry.  I guess she
doesn't much care for them.  My son took Chewie another treat and handed
it to her at her door.  She took the new treat, went back into her cage,
retrieved the strawberry and set it in my son's hand.  "Get this vile
thing out of here"-type behavior.

This YouTube video is all the evidence I need of rat intelligence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9MtvEM_Xi8