Last week I got a call from a local nature center. It seems they had 3 kangaroo rat pups (I think they got dumped off on them), anyhow they were having no success bottle feeding them and 1 of the pups had died. They wanted to know if I would bring down one of my nursing females and see if she would take them in. So I packed up my best surrogate mother rat and 5 of her pups (they were 4 days old) and went down.

I estimated the kangaroo rats to be around 10-12 days old ... they were covered in fur and slightly larger than her 4 day old pups ... but still had eyes closed and ears glued back.

I did have reservations about a rat mothering another species and voiced my concerns ... So we put the kangaroo rats in with her and i was ready to do a quick grab. She went over and started cleaning them ... everything looked good so I went home. The next day I went down again to drop off a bag of mice and asked about the rats ... they brought me to their "nursery" and said that she was being a great mom, but they asked if it was normal for the babies to have a death grip on a teat. The female got excited when they opened her enclosure and ran across the cage to see if they had any "treats" for her the 2 kangaroo rats were dragged back and forth across the cage 2-3 times and never released their hold on her.

I didnt think enough in advance to bring a camera to take pics ... but hopefully will remember to do so on my next trip. Just thought id share what I thought was an odd combination.

Bryan