Sally and Lucy, my two new flatmates

Kruge

Lucy:

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Sally:

Aren't they cute? Smile

Two real darlings!

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

Do you kiss them like some people kiss cats and dogs?

Kruge · Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 1:36 am Post subject:

Believe me - rats are amongst the best kissers there are out there!

Smile

It's like this: They like to drink from their human's mouth if they once find out that this works and might save them to run aaaall the way back through the room to their water pot. Besides - humans taste funny, especially after dinner... Smile

Apart from them being terribly clean it's just tooo cute as most rat owners will agree on - even those who don't let their rats usually do it. Smile

Years ago I had a rat, Weedy, who was so cool about this that I once or twice, just for the fun of it, let her clean out my backteeth after dinner with her head in my wide open mouth - talk about curage! Very Happy

Funny feeling, those whiskers tingling one's tonsils, though... Wink

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

My only issue with creatures of this repute is the stigma I associate with these small beasts and their bite.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Jeremy, you are just nieve to the nature of these wonderful creatures. They would never bite a fly!"

As a child, for some reason, a consistant stream of gerbils and hamsters made their way through my life, and on not so rare an occasion the dialogue between they and I would eventually wind up looking like I had a small rodent firmly embedded incisor-wise into some nameless finger, arm, hand, finger and rodent all flailing together in unison about the room in a wild frenzy of pain (me) and determination (they), primarily because that is precisely what was taking place. It was not long before I opted for intact fingers, and the rodents and I parted company for good.

Now I fear the bite. It's not so much will they as can they. So, be your accounts accurate, your testicular fortitude is far in excess of mine. Wink

Dr. Krudgelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Rodents

mosc · Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 9:42 am Post subject:

They look very nice, and they are luckey to have someone like you to take care of them.

Kruge, if this cuties can inspire you to write some music, what can?

Now to put on my editors hat: These pics need cropping or at least resizing. Photos on the forum are at best no more than 700 or 800 pixels. Also, Lucy's picture has a lot of redeye. I volunteer to retouch your photos if you'd like.

One more thing, These look like different varieties of rat. The ears look different. Any details?

Kruge · Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:44 am Post subject:

hi there and thanks for the offer - I thought that the image's size wasn't that important, since they're on my server and just linked to this forum from there so they don't take up space here (I just uploaded them as shot).

And Lucy's red eyes don't need retouching they actually look that way all the time.

Ok, about the varieties:

The small white one is what's called a "Farbratte" here - it's the usual type of houserat and comes in all kinds of colours and sizes from small females like Sally to large males like Kenobi who was allmost twice as large. Lucy is a "Dumbo" (so I heard) which is a variation of the normal Farbratte (Coloured Rat) with, as you allready noticed, different ears. Smile

Then there's also the colour-coding: Both of them are what's calles "Huskys" (like the dogs), which is a name for some kind of 1/2 albino. *Usually* those Huskys have white fur with light grey patches instead of black ones. Their eyes usually are like Sally's: With a slight *hint* of red, but mostly dark.

Lucy is quite funny for a Husky - she not only has that white - brown fur with the nice colour-transition, she also has the bright red eyes of a full albino - who usually have complete white fur and look like your usual labrats (it's a genetic defect caused by generations of incest in those big rattanks, iirr). Since their eyes let too much light get through the iris (which is semi-transparent) redeyes are extemely badsighted in daylight, it gets a little better in dusk.

As an interresting side-note: Allmost all redeyes sometimes stand still, fix fome far point and start to sway from left to right - many ppl believe this is part of the genetic defect, some kind of hospitalism, but it's actually a proof for the increadibly ingenuity of rats: through those motions the short sighted redeyes get a better picture of the space they're looking at - the way the different objects are moving tells them a bit about their placement in debth - that way they've *adjusted* to their shortsightedness. Smile

mosc · Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 12:02 pm Post subject:

Interesting.

The reason we like to keep the width down on pictures in the forum is because most people don't have really high resolution screens. So to read posts in this topic, you have to move the horizontal scroll bar all the time. If you reduce the width, it will make for better viewing Wink

mosc · Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 12:06 pm Post subject:

I've been told that rats and mice don't mix. If you have mice in your house, then you won't have rats. (I mean here not at pets, but as uninvited co-inhabitiants.) Is there truth to this story?

Kruge · Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 1:22 pm Post subject:

More or less - it's actually the other way around - if you've got rats you won't have mice. Smile

A friend of mine, who also owns rats, got some mice from another friend while she went overseas. The mice had their own cage which stood on it's own table.

I believe it was on the third day when Andrea found the mouse cage empty except for some half mouse head, some limbs and some blood stains.

The rats had paid a visit.

mosc · Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 1:35 pm Post subject:

Yes, that's why everyone loves them... Rolling Eyes

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

So Krudge, you're saying that this creature moves back and forth in order to establish 2 points of reference and thus establishes artificial depth perception by, at least, biangulating the target of it's attention?

That is fascinating. That is how astronomers measure the distance that deep space objects are from the earth. They measure the associated positions of these and adjacent objects in deep space when the earth is on one side of the sun in its orbit, then wait 6 months and remeasure these related positions, and can thus biangulate the (relative) distances of various objects. It also allows for stereoscopic imagery, and this rodent does that naturally to overcome a physiological handicap?

Natural technology kicks ass, doesnt it.

seraph · Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 2:38 pm Post subject:

Kruge
you should try this trick with your mice: Intelligent MIDI Sequencing with Hamster Control
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