Thread: Taming a rat
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Old March 17th, 2007, 03:03 PM
MyBirdIsEvil's Avatar
MyBirdIsEvil MyBirdIsEvil is offline
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Honestly to me it just sounds like you have a rat that genetically is very prone to aggression.
It sounds like you've been doing about all you can to tame her, and most of these tactics would work just fine on a normal rat, but her behavior is way out of the ordinary.
Sometimes you get a rat that is prone to aggression, and good breeders are very careful not to breed rats with ANY amount of aggression towards people.
You can try petting her and giving her food and talking to her softly, but there's no guarantee that she'll ever be completely nonaggressive.
You do want to avoid putting your hands near her cage when you're not handling her, or letting others do this. If she lunges and you pull your hand back it's reinforcing that her behavior will make you leave her alone, which is what she wants.
Every time she bites you and you pull away this is also reinforcing it, so be careful not to put yourself in situations where you need to pull your hand away because she's biting.

As soon as the babies are old enough to eat solid food I would seperate them from her immediately and start HEAVILY socializing them to people.

Last edited by MyBirdIsEvil; March 17th, 2007 at 05:27 PM.
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