Rat Behavior in Cages

Domesticated rats are clean, healthy and friendly creatures. Such rats are very social and highly adaptable creatures. Rats groom themselves and each other, play with each other, eat, drink and sometimes fight when caged. Because rats are social creatures, they tend to do better when two or more of them are present at a given time, but will sometimes fight for dominance and injure each other.

  1. Diet

    • Rats don't have a preferred food. They're omnivorous, and their diet is always adapted to what is available. Caged rats do well on commercial rat foods and anything else you're willing to drop in the cage. They tend to have a taste for what they have been given in the past. Sometimes a rat will eat inedible things -- this abnormal desire is called pica. They do this as a reaction to nausea. If the rat is eating something inedible and has recently escaped, then it may be reacting to a poison it has ingested.

    Fighting

    • Male rats in a group will establish a dominant rat. Sometimes this can lead to trouble. Two males with sufficiently dominant personalities will fight, sometimes to the death, so rats that are really hurting need to be separated from each other. Most of the time, this leads to minor dominance displays, such as the forced grooming of submissive rats, or the chasing of submissive rats. If a chased rat has nowhere to run -- as can happen in a cage -- or decides to hold its ground, a fight can ensue.

    Nesting and Sleeping

    • Rats will carry "desirable" materials to their nest. This depends on availability, as rats are flexible about their environment. Anything made available to caged rats could become nesting material. Rats are more active in the evening or at night. They will sleep for up to 15 hours. Multiple rats will sometimes sleep in a rat pile with the other rats, and sometimes they'll sleep in their own nest.

    Other Activities

    • Younger rats tend toward play fighting; it's the same kind of dominance behavior that occurs in mature males, but less intense. Rats all tend to chew: they chew on things to sharpen their long incisors, which continually grow through the life of a rat. Sometimes rats will grind their long teeth together to shorten and sharpen them. They have a range of noises they'll make, from soft squeaks to large squeals -- some of which mean the rat is in distress.