my bp will not take a white rat

I don't have a pastel but have a similar problem, bu the other way around. My Ball will take white mice, but not black mice.

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Originally Posted by zombie&lemons

i talked to a breeder today, Morphmakers, he said pastel generally well not go for rats. but go crazy over mice. but he did say that pastels are not to crazy about white rats. i have never seen my pastel eat a white rat. only white/black ones or African black rats

so we might be on to something here with these pastels

anyone else have the same problem???

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All of my pastels go crazy over rats. I don't feed mice.

We actually have a 5 year old male ball which my son calls "racist" because he will not eat anything white, mice or rats. We've even joked around about puting a little diluted blue food color on a white mouse to see if we could trick him. He is always curious when given a white food item, but upon closer examination, he simply backs off and coils back up.....

When my normal was younger (6+ years ago) she would only eat all white, or all black rats. I feed F/T and if I tired to give her a hooded one with a black head, she would try to swallow sideways from the shoulders (like the head wasn't even there.) It took a while but she finally figured it out and will now eat anything.

wow... more people than i thought. maybe there is something with this.

All my pastels eat any color rat on the face of the planet.

Did your switch in color correspond to a switch in supplier or food for the rats? It may have had a different smell.

JonV

nope, same place i've been getting them from

just out of curiosity, what do you use for substrate? i use paper towels, and i have a similar "problem" with my yellowbelly. i just assumed he was having difficulty tracking a white rat on the white substrate. so if i put an all white feeder in his enclosure, he'll strike, but it takes him longer than if the feeder is marked or colored in some fashion. i understand they use their labial heat sensors to paint a thermal "picture" of their environment, but surely they rely somewhat on optical stimuli too. or maybe not so much when hunting?

Your BP is racist.

One of my pastels switched from mice to rats in one night. He takes white, black, male, female (I keep track of these things). My other pastel is a mouse-eater. I did have one normal BP that preferred black rats/mice to white, though. But all of my others take any color/sex.