I once walked to one of those places where you can rent video-films, along with a friend. She owned two pet rats at the time, and she had one of them on her shoulder and I had the other on my shoulder. She had the nice one, and I had the mean one. So the one I had on my shoulder was a big mean and slightly yellowish rat, with a bad temper problem. His name was, in fact, Lucifer. My friend had no idea that he would turn into a biter when she named him, though. I can't remember the name of his nice tempered cagemate even though I bred him myself, but I do remember him being an agouti rex hooded, and probably a son of my first silver fawn rex rat Aphrodite's Count Dracula. Which means that this was about 20 years ago or so. Lucifer was very tame, meaning he liked being held and petted, and also he liked being carried around on your shoulder. As long as you knew how to handle him you never got bitten. The main thing was to never approach him from above, and never make any fast movements near him. Lucifer had a long history of biting people that was getting their fingers too close to the bars of the cage. He was a bully toward his cagemate, but never bit him badly.
We went looking for video-films and to our surprice the guy at the store tried to pet Lucifer! We hastily referred him to the nice rat on my friend's shoulder instead.
The trick to have Lucifer on one's shoulder without getting bitten was just to never turn your head in the direction of the rat (or you could get bitten in the face..). The trick to get him off one's shoulder without getting bitten was to slowly take hold of him from below. The trick to get him out of his cage without getting bitten was to remove the top of the cage first and try to take him from the sides and never ever from above. As long as you stricly followed these kinds of rules you never had a problem with him, and he could actually be really nice! Lucifer was a very tame rat with lots of opinions. His temper did get worse as he grew older, and after having bitten too many persons he was put to sleep, and the other rat my friend had got a relative from my rattery as his new friend. (I believe that one was a silver fawn rex hooded, another son of Aphrodite's Count Dracula, from another litter. My friend never had a problem with anyone being bitten by any of her rats again after that.)
But maybe there is a reason as to why I only can remember Lucifer's name? He had lots of personality, he was very tame, and as long as you followed the rules he didn't bite you. His cagemate was an extremely nice tempered rat, but he didn't do that much. He never escaped from the cage unless Lucifer found a way to open it, and sometimes not even then, Lucifer often escaped alone (and was really hard to catch without getting bitten). Lucifer's cagemate was the best tempered rat, but didn't have much personality, he was just sweet.
When Lucifer was alive I had no information about aggressive rats, that was just how some rats were. I remember, thinking back, that already then it was taught within the rat community that a group of rats always need a strong leader, a top dog in the cage. It was never told why though. And often the leader rat was the bully in the cage. Rats were territorial animals and needed to have a strong pecking order, that was told over and over again. I didn't question that then, I only thought that I personally didn't like the danger of getting bitten, so I promptly avoided those leader rats. For me it was as easy as the fear of getting bitten. Most of my rat owning friends over the years have had strong leader rats in their cages. Often these were great personalities, and often the owners got bitten by them. There also was a lot of tending to bites on the other rats. But these leader rats were often very special rats with lots of opinions and lots of funny antics, just like Lucifer. They were often very tame and very spolied rats. And very pretty rats too! Even though the leader rats usually were more prone to biting than the other rats in the cage, they were so special that the owner was very sad if he/she felt compelled to put such a rat to sleep even though it had bitten too many other rats badly, or even killed another rat. And you could never have more than one leader rat in the same cage, so sometimes you had to split up the rats into two cages, because you learned that one of the younger rats showed leader rat qualities. Meaning that the rat in question started challenge the top dog...
Of course some breeders or rat owners sometimes had nice tempered rats that didn't bite as their leader rats, but that was less common.
Well these mean leader rats were tame and spolied and pretty and they were often used for breeding. People liked them, they had personality. I never kept such bullies in my cages, though, since I was so afraid of getting bitten. Thus I generally avoided breeding from them too, since I didn't like to have such rats myself. But once I bought a pretty silver fawn female to mate with one of my nice males, and the result was horrible. She was nice enough, but her babies! That's when I started to wonder how that happened. I had mated two really nice tempered rats, and gotten bad temper in the litter. (I can't remember if Aphrodite's Count Dracula was still alive then, but this was not his litter.) Anyways, I remembered that the father of this nice female was far from nice. He was a free ranger, meaning he spent most of his life outside of cages, and had access to his owner's apartment at will. He was a great leader rat, and he bit anyone getting too close. He bit his owner too. Had his temper skipped a generation (his daughter that I had bought was really nice) and ended up in his grandchildren? I started to look into his pedigree and tried to find out as much about his ancestors as possible. I was lucky, he had lots of well known rats in his pedigree. I soon learned that he had lots of bad tempered rats in his pedigree... I could trace them far back through the years.
A friend of mine recently said something that made me think. I can't remember exactly what she said but it told me that she probably can't differentiate between tameness (how much the rat have been handled and like/are used to being handled by humans) and temper.
If that is common among rat breeders it gives me a better understanding of why temper problems still today, in 2004, are so common in rats. I learned about a rat breeder who tamed all her rat babies really really much before selling them. She spent hours and hours taming the little buggers. They were adorable when they were old enough to sell. The problem was that she had lots of bad temper in her line and that showed its ugly face in many of those rats when they grew older.
I did things the opposite way. I bred for temper instead, so I didn't have to put in so much effort to tame my rat babies, they were just born tame. I only had to clean the cage and hold them for a few minutes every week and they were perfectly tame, and never had any temper problems. Except for temporary temper problems if one of my buyers housed one of them in the same cage as an aggressive rat. I even got one of my males back at the age of 1 year. He had, sadly enough, spent his whole life with an aggressive rat. He had scars all over his body. Within 3 weeks or so he was living happily in my big rat male cage, with no problem. So it only took him 3 weeks to understand that he was among friends and that he never had to be bullied and bitten again... So I was accused of breeding cavies with tails instead of rats!
If there is a problem differentiating between temper and tameness in rats that in itself explains a lot. When people say they only use nice tempered rats when breeding and mean they use tame rats, the result will soon be more aggressive rats. A tame rat can have a bad or good temper, or anything in between. A good tempered rat may not always have such a remarkable personality, but will never bite. A good tempered rat must not always be tame, though! For example I have brought home many a lab rat, they have rather good temper, but are never tame when you get them.
Written by Eva Johansson, 26th of February 2004.
After looking through my old negatives I realized that Lucifer's cagemate was Simbad and Lucifer's replacement was Frazier, Simbad's half-brother.
Copyright Eva Johansson.
Last update: 11th of August 2006.