From Wikipedia:
Laboratory rats share origins with their cousins in domestication, the fancy rats. In 18th century Europe, wild Brown rats ran rampant and this infestation fueled the industry of rat-catching. Rat-catchers would not only make money by trapping the rodents, but also by turning around and selling them for food, or more importantly, for rat-baiting.
Rat-baiting was a popular sport which involved filling a pit with rats and timing how long it took for a terrier to kill them all. Over time, breeding the rats for these contests produced variations in color, notably the albino and hooded varieties. The first time one of these albino mutants was brought into a laboratory for a study was in 1828, in an experiment on fasting. Over the next 30 years rats were used for several more experiments and eventually the laboratory rat became the first animal domesticated for purely scientific reasons.[1]
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