Rats interacting with their enviroment
Rats are naturally very energetic creatures who love to explore their environment. They get much of this from their wild rat ancestors, however this is one of the area’s where our rats have taken a different path in many ways. Much of the environmental behaviour our pet rats exhibit is quite different to their wild cousins, which is to be expected given the number of years they have lived in a completely different artificial environment. However the links are still there and understanding what natural behaviours our rats need to exhibit helps us ensure that they get the right kind of stimulation via there cage set up and out of cage time. A rat that can exhibit all it’s natural interactive behaviours is generally a happier fitter rat.
Digging
In the wild rats dig burrows to live in, they also root around and dig shallowly to find food. Our pet rats also like to dig, when given the opportunity they quickly learn and become quite skilled at digging. A rat digs by scooping away at the soil (or other material) with it’s front paws. As it becomes more skilled it will often remove excess material with it’s back legs, often kicking it quite far as the back legs are powerful. Providing your rat somewhere to dig, either occasionally or on a daily basis will help promote this activity as well as give them another way to keep fit. Scattering a small amount of dry food into whatever material you choose for the rats to dig in can encourage them to start and mimics the digging wild rats do to forage.
Jumping
Rats are capable of very impressive jumps, though generally they are far better at doing the rat equivalent of the long jump than they are at the high jump. They prefer to jump from one flat stable surface to another horizontally or horizontally with a small elevation. One of the key things for a rat to be able to jump distances is the ability to clearly identify and judge the distance to a prospective landing point. This means that rats that suffer from poor sight or have reduced distance perception (i.e. only one eye) may struggle to jump a long distance. You can improve this by making the target area a distinctive shade from the surrounding area (colours may work but rats have poor colour vision, seeing blues and greens better than reds, different shade are far more reliable).
When a rat is preparing to make a jump they will perch on the edge of the launching platform, back paws close behind their front. They may begin bobbing there head up and down, sometimes standing on their back legs to get a better view. This helps them judge the distance. They will then crouch back down again and leap, using there powerful back legs to propel them. If your rat jumps from you to another object you can feel the force they use to propel them and also the jiggling from one foot to another that immediately precedes a jump, as they make sure they have good secure footing. Landing is generally a graceful affair as long as the rat has judge correctly. They will land first on their front paws and then there back will follow, if they misjudge there front paws will generally connect with their target but their back legs may miss leaving the rat scrabbling to try and catch them up. Slender rats normally achieve this well but bottom heavy rats may not have the upper body strength or grip to pull themselves up.
In a familiar place a rat will rarely look before jumping, knowing the distance already from previous attempts. This is why it can be useful to regularly change the layout of a cage, encouraging the rats to use their distance perception skills. The exception to this would be if you had a blind rat, in which case keeping the general layout the same will help them get around.
When a rat is preparing to make a jump they will perch on the edge of the launching platform, back paws close behind their front. They may begin bobbing there head up and down, sometimes standing on their back legs to get a better view. This helps them judge the distance. They will then crouch back down again and leap, using there powerful back legs to propel them. If your rat jumps from you to another object you can feel the force they use to propel them and also the jiggling from one foot to another that immediately precedes a jump, as they make sure they have good secure footing. Landing is generally a graceful affair as long as the rat has judge correctly. They will land first on their front paws and then there back will follow, if they misjudge there front paws will generally connect with their target but their back legs may miss leaving the rat scrabbling to try and catch them up. Slender rats normally achieve this well but bottom heavy rats may not have the upper body strength or grip to pull themselves up.
In a familiar place a rat will rarely look before jumping, knowing the distance already from previous attempts. This is why it can be useful to regularly change the layout of a cage, encouraging the rats to use their distance perception skills. The exception to this would be if you had a blind rat, in which case keeping the general layout the same will help them get around.
Foraging
In the wild much or a rats time is spent looking for food. This provides much of their mental stimulation and is why they are such intelligent animals. The norm in the pet rat world is to feed out of a bowl, which means that the rat is no longer required to work for its food. Introducing Scatter Feeding is a way to give this back to our pet rats and can be very rewarding (see enrichment section)