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Pet or Wild rat II2007-11-24 22:14:09

This is a secondary question to my earlier one. My question was whether or not this rat roaming our yard is wild or an escaped pet. If,in fact, this is a pet rat which I suspect it is, what are its chances of surviving in the wild? I'm thinking because it's a rat it will be fine but if it's domesticated then I don't know. It looked very healthy and busy with something.

Answers:

Although rats are intelligent, resourceful and have a strong survival instinct a domestic, or bred in captivity, rat will not fare as well as a wild rat.

There is a great study of how "lab" rats were released into the "wild" and how great they did. The "wild" was a fenced and tightly observed outdoor cage for all intent and purpose IMHO. Sure they did well, but they were essentially protected from their most dangerous predators, especially humans.

A domestic rat will likely not do as well as a wild rat "in the wild" as most domestic (read: pet) rats have learned their food and water source are primarily a human. That being the case the domestic rat will gravitate even more to people and will likely find itself harmed from a very unfortunately common misconception of rats ... or in other words it would be left to the services of an exterminator.

Thinking humans are good, the rat may happily go to its demise. I'm not saying the rat will not survive and thrive, just that it will have a much better oppurtunity at life if someone is able to "rescue" it from the"wild" of your backyard.

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If it doesn't have the typical coat colour of a Brown Rat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/brown_rat... ), it could be a pet. Chances are it won't do too well on its own, though--almost all pets that are released into the wild die prematurely from starvation, exposure to cold, etc.