Here is a lovely statue of a rat knitting DNA:
We owe a lot to rats.
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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I had companion rats. I had 7 of them (almost all rescued). they’re smart little guys. they can be toilet trained and you can teach them all sorts of tricks. I miss my rats :(
I have three right now. Theyre very sweet little guys with intense personality. It should be a crime how little their life span is.
it sucks that animals that can be SO affectionate (they pee on you to claim you as theirs lol) only live for 2-3 years, 4 if you're really really really lucky. It sucks :/
I was considering own one, but then I read they continuously piss everywhere.
if you get rats, you can’t have just one. they’re highly social and need other rats. two is the absolute minimum, but three is better. please don’t get just one. it’s cruel.
eta: also, they need a big cage. since they’ll be spending 20-23 hours a day in it, they need a lot of space. those little hamster cages won’t do (they’re too small for hamsters too tbh). the king of rat cages is the double critter nation. I had one. it was epic. they had soooo much room
they also need at LEAST one hour of playtime outside of the cage. but that’s just the minimum. if you can give them more, that’s even better.
Kind of true, but it's more like an ant scent marking. They know this is a place that's safe (rats have been here). With good absorbent natural substrate in the cage, and wiping down their free roam area if needed, it's mostly unnoticeable. I like to compare it to a person needing to change their t-shirt every day, probably not a deal-breaker for interacting, unless you don't clean for way too long.
It's not "kind of true", they mark scent with urine. And they'll mark all their cage mates too, and that includes their human.
But yes, rats are tiny and don't pee on you and your house much, that's true. They also absolutely have bladders (what a weird myth that is) and almost always potty train themselves to do most of their urinating in certain spots when not marking scent.
Me in collapsed building, seeing a rat with a backpack:
HOLY SHIT; NIMH IS REAL!?
... Yes nimh is real. It's based on the real nimh!
They also can detect mines and have been highly successful in saving countless limbs/lives in that field too(no pun intended). https://apopo.org/?v=0b3b97fa6688
Thanks for the link. This is really cool work! Search and pre-rescue rats are a small part of what Apopo does: they mostly do unexploded mine clearance and tuberculosis detection! 😳
What's in the backpack?!
C4
sounds like it's a gps transponder
Probably something other than gps, because that doesnt work when under a bunch of rubble. Well thats what i assume because gps doesnt work inside uncollapsed buildings either.
It's some kind of tracker regardless, more info and action pics(!) here: https://apopo.org/innovation-2023/?v=7885444af42e
Cheese
Some sort of signal emitter maybe? So the rescue team knows to look where the hero rat triggered it.
They should train them to bring down a little can on a string so you can talk to them 😂
I mean, you joke, but you couod probabky kit them out with a small Bluetooth earbud to pass off.
Could you imagine? You're trapped after an earthquake, and convinced you're going to die, and a little rat comes up, and you begin to get scared he's going to chew on your face, but he hands you a Bluetooth earpiece, and scurries off to get his treat. You pop it in your ear, and your rescuers are on the other end!
I'd want to meet that rat when it was over. Give him an entire granola bar.
Now if only we could get that rat past Israeli blockade 🇵🇸
They can also train turtles to do ninjitsu.
My cats, in the meantime: train themselves to know when humans dispense food, everything else be damned!
Took me a sec to get that the #womaninstem wasnt referring to the rat lol
Gotta love a heroic snotpest
Read MSDS
LD50 (Rat)
#Hero Snot Pests