# My rat Friendly, moves her head "like a snake"



## 3 ratties (Apr 6, 2013)

Hi! So one of my rats friendly, does this move, that my boyfriend calls "like a snake" She moves her head slowly from side to side like checking you out. She does this all the time and this video doesnt represent it the best, but i think you get the idea. my other two rats don't do this. I was curious if anybody else's rat does 
It's in the beginning of the video..her slowly moving her head...what do you think?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlg35MjS2S0


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## 3 ratties (Apr 6, 2013)

i know she seems a little skittish and maybe a little scared of me.. but trust me she's not. she's laying on me now as we speak lol. She was just freaked out with me letting her run around such a big area and i was standing so she couldnt crawl on me so i could get the video


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## JudeWriley (Aug 1, 2007)

Rats can do this because they can't see well. The head swaying is a way of "focusing" on something.


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

what colour eyes does she have? Sorry i cant see the vid as i'm at work. This is very common in red and pink eyed rats, the lack of pigment in there eyes generally means they have awful eye sight. The swaying is them attempting to judge distances better by seeing how objects move in relationship to each other (gives added depth of vision), but if there eye sight is particularly bad they may also be trying to focus better.

The topaz girl from my last litter is like this, she had red eyes, a lovely lady, but on one of her runs around her new homes rooms she ran straight into a cardboard box as she didnt see it, it was a similar shade to the floor and walls. Thankfully she wasnt hurt just a little embarressed.


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## zurfaces (Jan 16, 2013)

Mine sways too. Rats have very bad eyesight and its worse in red eyed rats and they sway to get an idea of how close or far away something is. My red eyed girl doesnt like free range time because of it. She just fear poops while everyone else is running around have a good time. So she gets to sit on my shoulder 

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## Ratfinx (Feb 19, 2013)

Blue does this all the time, it's because of bad eye sight, don't worry about it  


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## Piperstar (Apr 8, 2013)

*Poor motion perception:* Albino rats have greatly impaired motion perception. They are not motion blind, but they have poor motion perception when compared to pigmented rats. Albino rats require about twice to three times the coherence level to distinguish coherent motion patterns from dynamic noise.

Specifically, Hupfeld and Hoffman (2006) presented rats with moving dot patterns in which dots moved randomly on a screen. A coherent moving pattern was created by a proportion of the dots moving to the right. The percentage of dots moving to the right was called the "percentage of coherence." So, a 100% coherence meant all dots moved to the right; 70% coherence meant 70% the dots moved to the right while 30% moved randomly, and so forth. Both pigmented and albino rats could distinguish between a random pattern and a 100% coherence pattern. When the coherence was reduced, discrimination performance declined in both pigmented and albino rats. Pigmented rats tended to do better, but not significanly so, down to 30% coherence. Below that coherence level pigmented rats did significantly better than albinos. In sum, pigmented rats could discriminate a pattern of 12% coherence from dynamic noise, while albino rats needed about 30% coherence to make the distinction.

I got this from a website on rat eyesight http://www.ratbehavior.org/RatVision.htm#DepthPerception Hope it helps.


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## 3 ratties (Apr 6, 2013)

Yep she has red eyes


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## Cstaar (Mar 7, 2012)

I have one red eyed rat, she does this. When she was young every movement etc freaked her out. She spent months just hiding under a cushion on the sofa. After about 3 months she came out of her shell, and now she's the most exploratory of my 4 rats. She still sways her head, but has become braver over time and lost her skittishness. It just took her a little longer than the others.


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