# Can I give my pet rat a coffee bean as a super special treat?



## ArborWeek (Feb 18, 2014)

Hello, guys. I was wondering if it would be bad to feed my pet rat a single coffee bean as a super special treat? I know it has caffeine in it, but I really doubt that caffeine would hurt a rat. What do ya guys think? Do you guys give me the go-ahead?


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## Hephaestion (Jan 27, 2013)

Why? They love peas. The garden variety. They come very cheap frozen. Coffee beans are sour. They taste much worse than smell although I do love coffee. He won't die from it but my guess is he will prefer peas or fresh sweetcorn or a bit of kale.


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## ArborWeek (Feb 18, 2014)

Hephaestion said:


> Why? They love peas. The garden variety. They come very cheap frozen. Coffee beans are sour. They taste much worse than smell although I do love coffee. He won't die from it but my guess is he will prefer peas or fresh sweetcorn or a bit of kale.


I've eaten coffee beans before and they didn't taste that bad. Plus, if she doesn't like the taste then she won't eat it.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

It's not a good idea. At all.


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

Too much caffeine can cause heart failure, among other things...

If you think your rat loves coffee (mine do) I've let them lick my finger, or eat coffee flavored yogurt. A whole bean to them is like eating an entire cup of coffee beans for us (which is several litres of coffee) so...


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

I completely agree, its not a good idea, youd be better offwith a tiny peice of dark chocolate. Thoughto be honest your rat will love a healthy treat just as much and it doesn't cause any issues. I don't see the point in feeding rats rubbish when they are over the moon to be given a single rice crispie or pea


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Isamurat said:


> I completely agree, its not a good idea, youd be better offwith a tiny peice of dark chocolate. Thoughto be honest your rat will love a healthy treat just as much and it doesn't cause any issues. I don't see the point in feeding rats rubbish when they are over the moon to be given a single rice crispie or pea


Exactly this. As humans, we want to think that the treats we like are the treats they should get. SO many things are treats for ratties, so it's much better to give them something healthy.

The thing is that their lives are so short already. If we can add another several months through stellar diet... why wouldn't we?


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## ArborWeek (Feb 18, 2014)

cagedbirdsinging said:


> Exactly this. As humans, we want to think that the treats we like are the treats they should get. SO many things are treats for ratties, so it's much better to give them something healthy.
> 
> The thing is that their lives are so short already. If we can add another several months through stellar diet... why wouldn't we?


I understand the importance of a good diet, which is why I feed my rat the best diet there is. The only thing is, is that just because they have one treat every now and then that's not technically healthy for them, doesn't mean that it's going to have a detrimental effect on their health. I still really don't see why a single coffee bean would hurt her. It doesn't have THAT much caffeine in it. In fact, I couldn't see a single coffee bean having more than 20 milligrams, at max, of caffeine. That's a very small amount of caffeine.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

I never meant to insinuate that a simply treat will be a detriment.

If it is a treat that they are not to have, then yes, it can easily become a detriment.

It sounds like you are set on this and are not accepting any advice, despite the fact that you have what can only be described as nutrition experts telling you not to.

You will do what you want to do.


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## ArborWeek (Feb 18, 2014)

cagedbirdsinging said:


> I never meant to insinuate that a simply treat will be a detriment.
> 
> If it is a treat that they are not to have, then yes, it can easily become a detriment.
> 
> ...


I'm all for hearing more reasons as to why this would be bad for her. I'm still debating it in my head and I haven't decided whether I want to or don't want to. I'm just trying to get the most information I can about it before I decide.


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## brundlefly (Mar 27, 2014)

ArborWeek said:


> I'm all for hearing more reasons as to why this would be bad for her. I'm still debating it in my head and I haven't decided whether I want to or don't want to. I'm just trying to get the most information I can about it before I decide.


Dude just don't. It's that simple. Why are you so adamant about a coffee bean? Caffeine is bad for rats, case closed. I can almost promise you nobody here will think it's a good idea.


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

According to this link http://www.chemicals.moew.government.bg/chemical/site/File/registers/profile/58082p.pdf " in animals studies*caffeine*showed acute*toxicity*LD50*rat*oral 200-400 mg/kg ...". An ld 50 dose is where 50% of the animals die from that level of drug, for a small doe that woukd be very near the 20mg mark. Bearing in mind that that dlesnt mean that no rats died at lower levels of the drug, just that the median amount did. I have read 192mg/kg quoted elsewhere too. In short you are cutting very close to a toxic dose level unless you have a very chubby rat.

I think its a lovely thing to occasionally treat rats however theres nk reason why they cant be healthy treats which the rats will enjoy just as much. Really unhealthy treats are all about treating the owner, you think it is extra special when really to tbe rat its just an exciting bit of food, much like most others. Sure some rats love an unhealthy treat more than healthy treats however if theyve never tried it they dont know that they love it so much more, they just love what they get. Its kind of a wasted opportunity to not give them something healthy as a treat, after all one treat might not be bad but they can add up...


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## Hephaestion (Jan 27, 2013)

I don't mean to sound mean, but if you are debating a coffee bean in your head with such concern, you probably have a lot of time on your hands. In that time, you could easily go to the shop for a bag of frozen peas. The conflict would be resolved and your rat very happy. That's just my two cents. Causing yourself such grief over a coffee bean is really not worth it, is it?


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

Are you willing to take that chance for no reason other than curiosity...? If you think she/he would like the taste, and want to see a hyper fuzz ball then mix half a teaspoon up with something. Eating a whole coffee bean is... Well, put it this way. 

Lets say you're dealing with the estimate that you gave me of 20 mg bean and your rat is 1lb. That's 20 mg for 1 lb of weight.

If a person is 150 lbs, that's 3000 mg of caffeine, or twenty cups of high caffeine coffee, or FOURTY cups of medium strength caffeine. Thats also thirty caffeine pills- an entire bottle.

Would you give your family member or friend 20 cups of coffee at once? Or a whole bottle of caffeine pills ? Sure, it won't kill them maybe, but can you imagine the effect it would have even if it didn't.

Rats have definitely died with less than 200 mg... In addition, I don't know where you're getting the estimates for how much caffeine is in a coffee bean, but those are estimated based on the size of an average coffee bean with an average caffeine level. A single 5 oz portion of coffee (let's be real here, no one drinks that little.....) can have up to 150 mg of caffeine depending on the location it was grown, the method of brewing, roasting, etc etc. 

It is very possible that the bean could have, let's say, 30mg. And that your rat is sensitive to caffeine. And dies or has all sorts of horrible affects lasting hours (increased heart rate, palpitations, nervousness, anxiety, stomach pains, etc). This is a very real possibility; you are going to be putting your rat at risk. 

Have you changed your mind at all? 


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## thenightgoddess (Apr 2, 2014)

Gannyaan said:


> Would you give your family member or friend 20 cups of coffee at once? Or a whole bottle of caffeine pills ? Sure, it won't kill them maybe, but can you imagine the effect it would have even if it didn't.


Doesn't really have to do with rats but I took somewhere between 8-10 caffeine pills at once when I was in high school and got really sick, had to go to the hospital, and was very sick and bed ridden for a couple days after so a whole bottle of caffeine pills would probably kill you. Parents never found out what really happened they still think I had food poisoning.


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

thenightgoddess said:


> Doesn't really have to do with rats but I took somewhere between 8-10 caffeine pills at once when I was in high school and got really sick, had to go to the hospital, and was very sick and bed ridden for a couple days after so a whole bottle of caffeine pills would probably kill you.


Toxicity in humans is actually higher than you'd think.....That being said, some people would die from a bottle (people with heart problems or arrhythmia's, which are not always known by the person).

My stomach would be in horrible pain if I did that, and I don't even want to know what it would do to my heart (I have a high resting heart rate despite being healthy and active).


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## Antiquatemyheart (Mar 25, 2014)

Why not offer a little piece of very dark chocolate instead of coffee? It's a treat and it's good for them from what I've heard!


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## ArborWeek (Feb 18, 2014)

Gannyaan said:


> Are you willing to take that chance for no reason other than curiosity...? If you think she/he would like the taste, and want to see a hyper fuzz ball then mix half a teaspoon up with something. Eating a whole coffee bean is... Well, put it this way.
> 
> Lets say you're dealing with the estimate that you gave me of 20 mg bean and your rat is 1lb. That's 20 mg for 1 lb of weight.
> 
> ...


That doesn't make any sense, though. Are you say that a rat eating a single coffee bean is the equivalent of a human having 3000 mg of caffeine? How did you come to that number? If the LD50 in rats is 250 mg / kg and my rat only weighs a pound and I give her a single 20 mg coffee bean, then that is nowhere NEAR the LD50. Honestly, I don't see where the danger is in terms of the amount of caffeine. I can see where you're coming from with some of your points, but I don't think that particular point was correct. I'm still undecided, but I think I'm leaning more towards not giving her the coffee bean for now because I don't want her getting overly-excited.


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## Mitsy (Apr 8, 2013)

I wouldn't do it period cagedbirdsinging and Isamurat know what they are talking about. Once I ask a question about a food for my rats and if one of them say no I don't do it, they gave you facts that they know. the 50/50 chance of a rat dieing from the caffeine in a single coffee bean and not knowing exactly how much caffeine is in it, that right there would make me not want to give it to my rats. I wouldn't want to take the chances of losing my rat over something i thought they would enjoy.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

LD50 for caffeine in rats is 192 mg/kg, by the way. 

Regardless... I'm not sure where you are not seeing the simple math. Rat portion sizes with food and medications are all based on weight.

If you can't understand how bad of an idea it is to offer coffee beans as treats, then I have no idea what else to tell you. As I've said, you are going to do what you want to do and there is nothing we can say to stop you, clearly.


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## ArborWeek (Feb 18, 2014)

I've actually decided that I'm NOT going to give her the coffee bean, but I am going to give her a piece of chocolate. But, I do have one last question. What about HALF of a coffee bean on her birthday in 6 months?


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## Jackie (Jan 31, 2013)

A couple of the biggest rat buffs on the entire site told you not to. So don't. A coffee bean should not warrant this much talk. If it even has the possibility of being detrimental don't do it.


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## Jackie (Jan 31, 2013)

Can you like get off the coffee beans? No. Just no coffee beans period. There's no good reason to. Also you should be giving rats high percentage dark chocolate. I give my girls 85%, but just little tiny pieces. And once a week at most. I only do it to help with sneezes.


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## nanashi7 (Jun 5, 2013)

Just scrap the coffee bean. For the effort of one measly coffee bean, you can make a veggie cake for her or bake rat friendly stuff. 

Rats that aren't wild will eat anything gladly. It's our job to make sure nothing bad would happen. Any food that you are debating should be scrapped - if you think the dog bone has rawhide, the cuttlebone too much calcium, the melon too much d-limone....avoid it. Your rat won't know the difference. 

I'll bet all of us have at least once snuck a rat a naughty nomnom. But rather share half a potato chip, I feel better when I can give them a spoonful of carrots and peas each. Heck, I wish I are as good as my pets do. 


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## Serenity (Apr 14, 2014)

Why are you so adamant about feeding your rat a coffee bean? There is such a spectrum of healthy and yummy foods for rats to eat, why would you try feed your rat something so bitter and potentially harmful? Just curious.


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

ArborWeek said:


> That doesn't make any sense, though. Are you say that a rat eating a single coffee bean is the equivalent of a human having 3000 mg of caffeine? How did you come to that number? If the LD50 in rats is 250 mg / kg and my rat only weighs a pound and I give her a single 20 mg coffee bean, then that is nowhere NEAR the LD50. Honestly, I don't see where the danger is in terms of the amount of caffeine. I can see where you're coming from with some of your points, but I don't think that particular point was correct. I'm still undecided, but I think I'm leaning more towards not giving her the coffee bean for now because I don't want her getting overly-excited.



Since you seem so adamant, and I would feel terrible if something happened to your rat (as would you I'm sure, since you care about her a lot), I even worked out the numbers for you- calculations are below. This time in terms of percent instead of guesstimating in my head.

Firstly, its more accurate to say the lethal dosage is 192 mg/kg of weight in rats since that's the median LD50 (Which is actually 87 mg per pound). I found out what percentage of the LD50 your 20 mg of caffeine coffee bean is (22.9% of the lethal dose that killed 50 percent of the rats) . I then took the total amount of caffeine it would take to kill a human (for a 150 lb human, 11904.75 mg) and found out what 22.9% of that was. It's 2726.19mg.

Of course, so many different things come into play- weight, how fast it's consumed, the condition of your liver, your age, how you metabolize caffeine, etc etc. I just wanted to give you a ballpark to let you know how absolutely ridiculous it is for your rat to eat that coffee bean. Considering she's probably not even 1 pound.... I don't even want to think about it. If you gave her the coffee bean, she probably wouldn't eat all of it, but why on earth would you let her?


Lastly, so that you understand, an LD50 is what killed 50 percent of the rats, so the fact that the median is lower than the mean indicates that most rats are dying with smaller amounts than the mean. 50% of rats died with LESS than 87 mg per pound- female rats can also be smaller than a pound, just so you're aware, so the dosage to likely kill your rat is probably less than 87 mg.

If it took 100mg of bleach to kill your rat, and you were like, oh, I'm going to only feed her 22.9mg, should I twiddle my thumbs? No, I'd feel guilty if I didn't at least warn you. I've done my part and I have nothing more say except I do not respect your decision what so ever as a pet owner, although I still respect you as a human being.


(192mg/kg)*(1kg/2.205lb) = 87.1mg/lb

20/87.1 *100%= 22.9% LD50 for rats

(175mg/kg)*(1kg/2.205lb) LD50 = 79mg/ lb in humans, 11904.75 for 150 lb person

22.9% of 11904.75= 2726.19mg of caffeine is 22.9% of the amount that would kill 50 percent of the population, and is the rough equivalent of 20 mg in rats. 




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## Lesti (Jun 25, 2013)

...I was trying to stay out of this, but- why would your rat even consider eating a coffee bean in the first place? They're bitter and nasty, and they smell weird, too! I don't like giving my rats anything even smelling of coffee, much less feeding them the actual thing. If you want to wake up to a dead or extremely sick rat the day after her birthday, go ahead and give her that bean...I'm sure she'll thank you for it -_- I say give her something else. A pea, some strawberries- heck, even a fruit loop or two. She'll enjoy those more than she'd ever like the coffee bean! Isamurat and Cagedbirdsinging know their stuff. I suggest you listen to them. I'm sorry to be harsh, but no one wants you to kill your rat.


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## ArborWeek (Feb 18, 2014)

Lesti said:


> ...I was trying to stay out of this, but- why would your rat even consider eating a coffee bean in the first place? They're bitter and nasty, and they smell weird, too! I don't like giving my rats anything even smelling of coffee, much less feeding them the actual thing. If you want to wake up to a dead or extremely sick rat the day after her birthday, go ahead and give her that bean...I'm sure she'll thank you for it -_- I say give her something else. A pea, some strawberries- heck, even a fruit loop or two. She'll enjoy those more than she'd ever like the coffee bean! Isamurat and Cagedbirdsinging know their stuff. I suggest you listen to them. I'm sorry to be harsh, but no one wants you to kill your rat.
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from Petguide.com Free App


I've eaten coffee beans before and they tasted fine. Also, I'd like to say that a coffee bean is NOT going to kill my rat. Under any circumstance. I'm sorry, but it is just physically impossible for the amount of caffeine in a single coffee bean to kill or even minorly harm my rat. But, if you read my earlier post, you will notice that I have actually decided against it for now, but I am considering giving her one on her birthday 6 months from now.


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## nanashi7 (Jun 5, 2013)

WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THE DATA THAT A COFFEE BEAN WILL NOT KILL YOUR RAT?

Jesus Christ, man. We're giving you science, math, and you're giving us opinions. Please, please, please just knock it off if you're trolling. Don't give a coffee bean to your rat. Don't be ridiculous. You are YOUR RATS CARETAKER. Take care.


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## nanashi7 (Jun 5, 2013)

It should be noted my girl, with a tumor, 2.5yr old, fat as a rat, IS NOT EVEN A POUND.


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## Nikadi (Jan 11, 2014)

Why why why why why would you insist on trying to give her something that people have already said is a bad idea? She's your rat, do it if you really want for her birthday, but tbh, I'd much rather not give my rats something that could cause issues and wonder why anybody would want to give their rat something, 'treat' or not, that could potentially cause a problem. You're being obtuse for the sake of being obtuse I think.


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## ArborWeek (Feb 18, 2014)

Fine, I won't give her a coffee bean on her birthday either. I just thought it would be a fun idea for Melody that she would like, but I guess I was wrong... :-/


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

Just in case anyone else decides to follow this route, I looked up what the lowest known dose to kill a human was. )humans and rats metabolize caffeine/ experience toxicity at the same dose per unit weight)

It was, according to the Material and Safety Data Sheet, 57 mg/kg of weight, which is about 25mg per pound. That's actually a good estimate of the amount of caffeine in a large coffee bean; considering your rat probably isn't a pound, you could easily reach that or more. 

So yes, you COULD have killed your rat, and please stop saying otherwise. everyone makes mistakes - heck, i certainly have. the most important thing is learning and growing. I'm happy you've decided against it. 


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