behavior i didn't consider possible.

first off. Hello everyone, and i hope your day so far is well :),

so im in the first week of breeding rats in a seven tub rack system.
i am still in the learning phase with these animals. i got the rats i have now included when i bought the rack.
i had a left over mouse pink from my snakes that had not been eaten so i placed it in my rat tub because i didnt want to kill it myself.
i had figured the rats would eat it honestly. none of the 1.3 rats i had in there have a litter right now. yet one of the females is always next to it. its four days later
and its STILL ALIVE! now i thought cuz it was a mouse they wouldn't want it plus i figured the male would eat it....guys im stumped how is this thing still alive lol?

Sometime, especially in colonies the rats will adopt each other's young. 1.3 colonies I find, spend a lot of time stealing pinks from each other, and/or working together to raise the babies. If you already have an established colony you may find a female who may have recently had a litter may adopt a different species. If it's still alive and looks relatively healthy you may have successfully fostered by the female you're referring to.

That's my 2 cents, but I hadn't spent a lot of time breeding (8 months before I closed down my breeding project) - And I never had to foster babies, but that's something I remember reading somewhere.

Cheers.

except this pinky was a mouse pinky and none have had litters in a month....

First off, that's awesome! Ive heard of rats adopting young of another species, but not first hand accounts :) Now, I don't want to rain on your parade, but the pink is probably slowly starving to death. Hopefully one of the females drops soon and can feed it, but I wouldn't get my hopes up on long term survival. Just my .02.

Why would you let it starve? That's a horrible way to die.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by decensored

you may find a female who may have recently had a litter may adopt a different species.

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My bad there "decensored" lol. ill see if a snake wants it now.i dont want the poor thing to starve.

A lady who runs a pet store near me was telling me how rats will adopt hamsters, gerbils and other rodents too.

She puts them with the rat mothers if they get rejected or something happends to their birth mother.

Does it have a milk belly still? It's not too common for rats to adopt other species, but it can happen. If it actually did happen, it'll be interesting to see if the rat will continue caring for the baby as it becomes obvious it isn't a rat pup. Rats can be opportunistically predatory, and can/will kill animals smaller than themselves.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sorraia

Does it have a milk belly still? It's not too common for rats to adopt other species, but it can happen. If it actually did happen, it'll be interesting to see if the rat will continue caring for the baby as it becomes obvious it isn't a rat pup. Rats can be opportunistically predatory, and can/will kill animals smaller than themselves.

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no the adoptive mother isnt producing milk. i fed it off already i didnt want it to starve. however i like that particular rat alot more now :) lol

Oh ok. That's pretty neat though!

You want to be really careful introducing other species and even the same species from external sources into your established colony. That is an easy way to introduce a terrible mycoplasma that could easily wipe out your entire colony. Ive seen it happen to small colonies and even numerous big colonies (thousands of mice/rats per week).

I was taking care of a litter of mice and after they were weaned, I had to move the male babies. Out of curiousity, I moved them into a tank with three of my male rats. Not only did none of the rats eat the mice, but one in particular would cuddle them a lot. I'll see if I still have the picture somewhere.

This is a interesting topic. I actually had one hopper ASF left after feeding our small batch off. I put the ASF hopper in with hopper rats about a month ago and they are all growing up and surprisingly there is no aggression shown at all. I thought maybe the ASF would try to dominate the rest of them, or the rats would gang up on the ASF. I have been keeping an eye on them closely just incase.