# Biting Rat.... But not aggressive?



## Jox (Jun 10, 2012)

I recently adopted two georgous female rats from the labs at my university. They were used in the psyc dept for students to train to press a lever for food. Our university has a great reputation for animal welfare, but im pretty sure the rats werent really handled for about 5 weeks prior to me adopting them.Anyway, over the last six weeks i've been taking things really slowly with getting my rats used to handling. They will happily run over me now during play time, and will sometimes run onto my arm from their cage. Charlie is taking longer to warm up to me, but daisy will sit on my shoulder and chatter away while i clean their cage. Neither are comfortable yet with picking up or petting. The problem is that Daisy will also run up to me during playtime and bite my hand. Even if my hand is still and not moving. These arnt small exploratory bites, but skinn popping make me bleed bites. Does this mean she is an 'aggressive' rat? She never fights with charlie and seems pretty happy and playful when not putting holes in my skin  Has anyone experienced this before, or have advice on whether this behavoiur will go away over time? Im prepared to be as patient with them as i need to be...


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

In my day all of the rats used for psych experiments were adult pink eyed whites. This usually adds bad eyesight to no human socialization. I actually believe that human rat handling was discouraged to avoid queering the experiments. And yet a friend adopted her lab rat and did very well with it. So it can be done.

Thankfully rats do learn over time, so their behavior can be changed. Most likely your rats have grown up in an all rat environment and Daisy is the Alpha rat making it very clear to you she is in charge. Most of the advise people give about trust building and patience already assumes that the rattie has some socialization and accepts humans as dominant. From the lab rats I recall, this wasn't the case at all. Most of the lab rats we got were down right viscious.

So you have two objectives, one to gain your ratties trust with kindness and treats and second to make it clear in no uncertain terms that you are the boss. With baby rats this is done by play fighting with them, they rarely actually bite to break your skin, but you end the engagement by flipping them over onto their backs and tickling their tummies to show them you are in charge. This is just a little bit scarey but also a lot of fun. 

In your case your problem is a lot more severe because the rats are bigger and more capable of inflicting a serious injury. Again from my personal experience with psych lab rats forget about patience. As soon as your rat bites or tries to bite, you have to make it very clear immediately that biting is unacceptable behavior and that you are the Alpha rat. I'll let someone else explain the best ways of communicating dominance to adult rats, I have a tendency to sound overly harsh, but biting is a deal breaker. And you have to take the necessary measures to correct the problem before you have to destroy the animals. Rats that bite are not house pets! Once you have overcome the dominance and biting issue, then you can move on to patiently building trust. 

You are a kind and good hearted person for trying to save lab rats that otherwise would be destroyed, but in the world of rat dominance, you can't afford to lose this battle and you can't go on letting your rat bite you. 

BTW this advise should never be applied to the training of normal human socialized ratties, where kindness and patience are the only training methods that should ever be considered.


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## Jox (Jun 10, 2012)

Thanks for the advice  I guess i'm a bit nervous now about picking her up or leaving my hands lying around during playtime. Its difficult as it's when she's right in the height of her playfulness that she will run up and bite me. She just bites so hard! I will try the turning her over and tickling her belly trick and see if that helps. I'm not sure what breed of rats they are, but they are black and white with hooded rat markings and black eyes.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Just to try to clear this up... if a rat attacks you, you get a wound that bleeds, takes a few weeks to heal, and hurts for days. Somehow, I'm thinking that's not what your rat is doing or you would be more colorful in your descriptions. If nips happen during playtime, I'll stick with my dominant behevior theory and the flip and tickle approach should work. Combined with swift negative reinforcement if he does hurt you.

Now this will sound absolutely counter intuitive, but the more you shy away and back down, the more agressive your rattie may get. Exercising as much care as you can, you actually need to be more agressive in playing with your ratties. You are the human, you are the boss and you are their alpha, until this is resolved you are going to have behavorial problems with rats so absolutely unsocialized. After you are the boss, they will follow your lead and fall in line.


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## Jox (Jun 10, 2012)

Well, this is the kind of bite I get 1-2 times a week. Last night i made a point of being particularly confident with Daisy, and picking her up often and holding her (even though she didn't want to be) and giving her a 'power groom'. She actually responded not by being afraid, but by being even more eager to run onto my shoulder and nibble (nicely) on my ears. I think I'll persevere like this, and hope she won't draw any more blood









The other weird part is that Daisy isn't the dominant rat in the cage. Charlie, even though she is less hyper during playtime and is taking longer to be happy to run onto me, is the dominant groomer in the cage and is the rat on top when they wrestle.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Thats a pretty nasty bite. And that behavoir can't be tollerated and needs to be immediately and promptly discouraged in whatever compassionate humane fashon (that isn't going to get me flamed) your rat can understand.

But even a less dominent rat doesn't want to be at the absolute bottom of he heap. And no, your rat isn't supposed to get afraid of you! She's supposed to respect you. 

You would expect that the nicest, most agreeable and best behaved girl in a classroom to have the most friends, but in reality most human girls in the class wants to hang out with the flashy, pushy popular girl (read as alpha rat). You would also expect the strongest boy in the school to do most of the fighting, but this is also rarely the case. It's usually a little bit down the school house food chain that fights occur. 

Every rattie wants to buddy up with the alpha human and push off or be dominant over any person or rat it percieves as inferior to itself. 

From the bite on your hand, I know this is taking more than a little courage, but it sounds like it is working... congrats on being an alpha rat. Keep it up.

One final point, I've noticed that if I'm watching a scarey movie, my rat actually dives for cover during the scarey scenes. It might be the music but rats also might be able to sense human fear, don't know, but forewarned is forearmed.


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## Jox (Jun 10, 2012)

Thanks for the advice again. Seems pretty obvious in hindsight, but after making a decision to 'be the alpha rat' i haven't suffered a single bleeding bite. Whats more, both Charlie and Daisy are really coming out of their shells and happily spending time hanging out with me outside the cage. Even my boyfriend is happy to hold them now (and enjoys tickling Daisy's belly if she does let out a hard nip...). I really felt like I wasn't giving them their best ratty retirement before, but now they seem like the happiest rats!


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

You are most welcome, I'm glad I could help. I'm afraid that too many humans get this part of "trust building" (euphemism for basic animal training) wrong and way to many ratties wind up having unhappy, lonely or even tragic lives because of it. I compliment you on your courage and perseverance.

And yes, I'm happy to hear your ratties are coming out of their shells, they are taking their lead from their friend, pack mate and alpha. 

Once pack order has been established you will be surprised how far your human - rodent relationship can go.


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