# Refusing To Listen



## ksaxton (Apr 20, 2014)

My girl Naydeen is really hyper and curious, she's the girl who wants to go everywhere and do everything all at once. When she free ranges she will follow me around the room and prance from place to place, and she's obviously really having a lot of fun. But for the life of her she just won't listen!! I tell her not to jump in the trash can, she does it anyway. I pick her out of it and give her a stern "no" and later she's back in it. When I open the closet which she's not allowed in, she will follow me and try to get in it and I keep pushing her back and saying "no" but she'll just come right back and keep trying. How do you tell a rat no and let them understand you're serious? I've tried using a commanding tone when I correct her and I've physically corrected her every time (picking her up/pushing her back). 


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Rats first of all need to understand your commands. But generally they learn them pretty quickly. 

Then, now here's the tricky part, rats understand commands as suggestions, not orders. And they understand your commands and put them into context. If you are calling your rat and are holding a warm French apple pie. Your command makes sense. It translates into come for hot apple pie, which is a very good suggestion. If at 10:00 PM every night you lock them into their cage your suggestion sounds something like come and stop having fun and get locked up for the rest of the night. Contextually this suggestion is far less appealing and makes little or no sense to your rat at all... So you must be confused and your rat isn't going to listen to you.

I like to use the term pack animal when writing about rats, and yes they do have a highly organized social structure, but it's not like a wolf pack... rats are more independent and constantly contextualize their interactions with each other and their environment. If an Alpha rat jumps off a cliff his pack is not likely to follow. Rats do accept suggestion, but they respond depending on how they see them serving their best interests at the time.


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## ilovescience (May 14, 2014)

Is there a way to rate a response? Because Rat Daddy's reply was kind of epic. It's very interesting, the comparison between rats and dogs. Are rats not trainable, then, to the extent dogs are? Because some well-trained dogs will jump off a cliff if you order them to.

I was actually wondering this myself. It seemed like whatever I tried to get Algae *not* to do, the harder I tried, the harder she tried. Granted, there's only ONE thing she ABSOLUTELY CANNOT do, which is to go in between the window ledge and window screen (if it popped off, or she chewed through and fell.. well, I lived on the 20th floor). So it seemed like a good idea to be able to have a sparsely used command that is unfailingly obeyed, for the sake of safety and whatnot. How do you recall your rats when you're outside and walking along the beach or pier and there's so many things for them to explore?! 

Btw, Naydeen sounds PRECIOUS.


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## ksaxton (Apr 20, 2014)

Oh she is so cute when she free ranges, while her sister just slinks off to nap somewhere, Naydeen is like a little puppy. It's nice because she actually seeks out my company, she will hang around me and climb on me and whenever she sees me doing something she might like, she just has to run over and investigate. Definitely my most outgoing rat. 


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## ksaxton (Apr 20, 2014)

Rat Daddy said:


> Rats first of all need to understand your commands. But generally they learn them pretty quickly.
> 
> Then, now here's the tricky part, rats understand commands as suggestions, not orders. And they understand your commands and put them into context. If you are calling your rat and are holding a warm French apple pie. Your command makes sense. It translates into come for hot apple pie, which is a very good suggestion. If at 10:00 PM every night you lock them into their cage your suggestion sounds something like come and stop having fun and get locked up for the rest of the night. Contextually this suggestion is far less appealing and makes little or no sense to your rat at all... So you must be confused and your rat isn't going to listen to you.
> 
> I like to use the term pack animal when writing about rats, and yes they do have a highly organized social structure, but it's not like a wolf pack... rats are more independent and constantly contextualize their interactions with each other and their environment. If an Alpha rat jumps off a cliff his pack is not likely to follow. Rats do accept suggestion, but they respond depending on how they see them serving their best interests at the time.


So does that mean that as long as what I am telling her to do conflicts with what she wants to do, she just isn't going to listen? 


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## ksaxton (Apr 20, 2014)

Oh and I think she has a general understanding of some commands, like when I call her she will usually come running to me UNLESS of course that means she has to stop doing what she wants :/ 


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## nanashi7 (Jun 5, 2013)

The easiest way to teach a rat NOT to do something is to either make it impossible to do something, or redirect their energy into somethin less destructive.

It's also worth noting "DONT DO THAT" can mean different things. Don't chew this wire = don't chew this particular, singular wire.

Example - my wallpaper. At best, my scary mom voice communicates "this particular location should not be chewed". They'll move to a new one. After a couple of months, they learned "the wallpaper near the floor should not be chewed" so moved to standing on stuff and chewing, at a higher height. 

My solution came recently. I now wrap stuff in tinfoil and hide that around the room. They rip that to shreds, and spare my wallpaper. 

I also made the wallpaper harder to get at where I could by blocking the wall with furniture.


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## nanashi7 (Jun 5, 2013)

ksaxton said:


> Oh and I think she has a general understanding of some commands, like when I call her she will usually come running to me UNLESS of course that means she has to stop doing what she wants :/
> 
> 
> Sent from Petguide.com Free App


She weighs her decision. It's been found rats do this in psychology.

So, she has this amazing slice of pizza she's eating. You say stop eating. Your punishment is a boop. Is no pizza worse than a boop? Is pizza worth a single boop?

In her ratty mind, your stop eating is a bad decision.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

First of all outdoors, rats are under a very high stress load, some listen better and even learn to interpret your tone of voice. When Fuzzy Rat was almost two years old she was running towards a pack of running kids, I shouted Freeze!!!!! and she stopped in her tracks, that was the first time that command ever worked. Principally because she understood the tone of my voice was so severe that there was likely clear and present danger she hadn't seen yet. But mostly outdoors she listened way better than indoors where she was the undisputed master of her universe.

And yes as rats are metacognative they are constantly evaluating your commands against their own desires. Fuzzy Rat knew I didn't want her on my keyboard and that it upset me for her to trash my work... So if she really wanted attention she would pounce on my keyboard. She knew that after I shouted some obscenities at her she would have my undivided attention. 

As to the window thing, my office is on the second floor of a very tall house, it's about 25 feet down. I lift the screens up so my rats can hang their heads out. I've never had one jump off to her death yet... The other day Max jumped from my chair to the windowsill, it was over a foot jump and that worried me a bit, because if she overshot the leap she would have been gone, but she didn't and I'm watching more closely and gently putting her on the windowsill rather than letting her jump there. I also make a point never to startle a rat who's hanging her head out the window. Seriously most rats aren't stupid and won't leap to their deaths.

The question as to whether rats are more trainable than dogs is relative. Rats will behave consistently given the same ideal situations. They are hungry, and you are holding a pizza and you call them and they will come nearly 100% of the time... You dive out a window and they will hold back and watch you fall to your death 100% of the time. Therefore they can be trained and will be consistent. But a rat will not act against it's own best self interest. When my parrot bit my ear, Fuzzy Rat ran up my arm from the table to defend me. Which was actually very impressive, but Fuzzy Rat had already had a couple of fights with that parrot and she won hands down each time blooding the bird. If that was a tiger that attacked me, I'm thinking she would have dove for cover. 
Now I've also worked with dogs that didn't always follow commands when they conflicted with their interests, but dogs will subordinate their safety and interests to human commands much more readily than rats will.

There's an interesting rural myth that rat packs will attack humans in numbers, that was reported to me by hillbilly friends that would jacklight rats on motorcycles at the dump. Once the rat would discover that the humans were attacking them the rats would respond in pack force and the humans had to flee on their motorcycles... I don't know if this is true, but it would make sense in terms of soldiers that engage in combat in platoon numbers. Even human soldiers rarely charge the enemy alone.

All in all, I wouldn't say rats are less trainable, once you understand their psychology. But keep in mind you are dealing with a metacognative brain that's co-processing a staggering array of environmental data. 

Both dogs and humans are pretty new to the universe, rats have been around practically since dinosaurs and with generations as fast as 6 month's those little brains are super evolved. No they aren't supercomputers like ours, but they are pretty sophisticated I-phones. There's a reason why rats are the second most successful species on earth... And part of that reason is that they won't dive off a bridge after a bad alpha and they will watch another rat try new food first and they evaluate your commands against the personal safety and best interests.... 

Evolutionarily speaking rats might actually be much smarter than dogs, not only do they learn commands, but they contextualize them for safety and profit. And they can even learn to do the complete opposite if it will benefit them most...  just like little kids who do annoying things to get your attention... If your rats are behaving strangely, they just may be playing you or messing with you mind on purpose... to get their way.


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## ksaxton (Apr 20, 2014)

Well maybe I'm finally getting somewhere, I was just able to talk her out of a corner where she had started chewing on the cardboard barriers. Then she went for the trash can again but I quickly went over and told her no and she didn't go for it. Hopefully she's picking up on it 


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## Charlottesmom (Nov 27, 2013)

Is it an open top trash can? Maybe a trash can with a top would keep her from climbing in? When we had our boys one would constantly climb into a little trash can I had under my desk so I bought a taller covered one and he was never interested in it again. Guess you could say he trained me. ;0)


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## Toblerina (May 26, 2014)

I had my first experience with this today! Mostly Bert and Ernie free range on the sofa with me at the moment... and usually they're too nervy to go far from me or out from under my t shirt for long. But today Bert was obsessed with going under the throw that I have on the sofa (to stop them chewing the sofa... wasn't best pleased when they last tried that!). I kept stopping him from going and saying no, but the more I did it, the more he seemed to want to! Then of course Ernie figured this seemed like a good idea. I tried taking them up to the bathroom (pretty much my only rat proofed area) and got pooed and peed all over - I think they were nervous because its not such a familiar place....


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## BlackAce (Apr 18, 2013)

Hahahaha I love this thread. This has been so typical with my experiences with my little ratties. The more you try to stop them from doing something, the harder they're going to try and do it. Annoying in the moment, and yet so endearing overall


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## BethC (Apr 6, 2014)

I have to say, training my cats as a child was easier then training my boys. I think that have some selective hearing, similar to cats. 

Cats do not listen to anything you say unless it is in their self interest. That's why spray bottles work better for bad behavior, or if they know you are mad at them. it teaches them that if they behave a certain way, they get wet. That teaches them not to jump on tables or counters or pee in corners. Also my cats and I had a strong bound, they come when I call and tend to fallow me around.

My rats on the other hand.... They seem to be indifferent about water and my wrath. And if u pick them up away from what they are doing, they go right back to it. It's a working progress but once I figure out a good technique I will be sure to share. 


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I might add that one unique thing I learned from Fuzzy Rat's remarkable ability to understand and communicate was that she never generalized the way humans do.

For example she learned it was correct and proper to pee and poop on black top. So when she came inside all black things, like my telephone and my wife's leather chair were fair game. They were both textured black surfaces too. To a human, a parking lot, a chair and a telephone are very different things. To a rat they are just surfaces.

The next thing I learned was that she understood words to have a particular and unique meaning. Therefore if the chair in my office was "chair" the chair in the living room could not possibly be "chair" because "chair" was in my office. Humans tend to generalize based on function, whereas rats don't use things the same way or group things the same way.

Lastly "NO" does not translate into rat. Humans and even some dogs seem to understand "NO" in terms of relevance to what they are doing. So "NO" can mean "No chewing the furniture" or "No dumpster diving the kitchen trash" but if a rat learns "NO" means "No chewing the furniture" it's a very confusing command when they are dumpster diving you kitchen trash... You say "NO" and they think you have lost your mind... most certainly they aren't chewing your furniture. This became a real problem with "No chewing wires" If I said "No chewing wires" she would simply chew another wire and leave that one alone, because in her mind the wire I was yelling at her was "wires" so the other long flexible things were obviously something else and were fair game to chew. The same problem came about with the word "Stop". One day when she was running into a potentially hazardous situation I shouted "Freeze" and she stopped in place. It was rather quite remarkable. I had never associated "Freeze" with another activity so she understood the term. I'm sure when I had yelled "stop" it was very confusing to her because in her mind "stop" was associated with chewing carpets or something else and was not relevant to the situation.

If you are going to train a rat keep in mind they don't see things the way you do and they don't generalize the way we do. You and I hear telephone and that includes I-phones, rotary phones, wall phones desk phones and all sorts of different devices we connect to each other with. As rats don't talk on phones and don't have the same functional use for phones, "phone" is the one on your desk and not your I-phone. If you keep that in mind you will be able to craft better commands that your rat can better understand.

It was a very unique experience working with Fuzzy Rat because he behavior was so very consistent. Once she learned something she usually did it. So when she misunderstood something she did that consistently too. And commands that were obvious to us, clearly made no sense to her. 

The "1" key on my black desk telephone still sticks...


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