r/RATS Jun 28 '26

DISCUSSION Choking in rats: what you need to know and should do

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Rats, especially older rats are prone to choking because they lack the ability to throw up. While they do have a gag reflex to keep their respiratory systems safe from harmful blockages, they do not have a standard-human-like gag reflex that allows them to vomit due to the lack of muscular and neutral pathways.

Symptoms of choking:

- Ears and/or neck are pulled back and forth/

- Gagging and retching

- Opening mouth while drooling and/or foaming

- Panic and stress symptoms and distress signals: pacing around in the cage, hiding, pawing at mouth, excess porphyrin

If your rat is choking, although it can look extremely alarming and scary, you should avoid intervening or taking your rat to the vet because it can cause them more harm than good. Instead, keep your rat where they are. Keep the room dark and quiet and minimalise interaction to prevent further distress. If they are very panicked and are flinging themselves around the cage and are a risk to themselves and/or cage mates, place them in a smaller cage and wait for the rat to cough up the stuck food. Keep in mind, sometimes it can take as long as several hours and as little as a few minutes. During this time, it is important to monitor them.

If you take your rat to an experienced, exotic vet, they will know to not intervene and instead, suggest the above. However, if you take your rat to a regular vet who may not be experienced in rats, they may feel the need to intervene. If the vet goes in to remove stuck food pieces, they may damage the rat’s trachea which can significantly impair the rat’s ability to clear mucus and can lead to severe breathing difficulties. 

Emergency symptoms where a vet is needed: (during and after choking: (rare)

- Extreme lethargy

- Extreme exhaustion/unconsciousness 

- Difficulty breathing: laboured breathing, gasping, wheezing

- Cyanosis - loss of clutter around the tail, ears, paws and lips.

Secondary infections: Coughing up fluid, rattling sounds in the chest, or labored breathing in the days following the choking incident, which can indicate aspiration pneumonia

 

Emergency last resort: “The rat fling” - rat equivalent to the heimlich maneuver:

The rat fling MUST be a last resort - to the point your rat is actively dying, cannot breathe and you cannot reach the vet’s in time. The rat fling can cause a significant amount of damage to a rat so do NOT do it if it is not necessary. 

A video example on how to do the rat fling is shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub0nGg1cKhc at 8:15. 


r/RATS Aug 05 '26

INFORMATION Yes, a pair of rats is significantly better than a single rat, but let me explain to you why groups matter!

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It’s very common you see soon to be owners wanting to get a pair of rats because they research that they shouldn’t be alone. However, rats are naturally group animals that thrive in groups of three or more. While two is considered to be the bare minimum standard for the very reason of not being kept alone, it is not an ideal long-term solution for either you or the rats. It is very important to understand the factors of your decision-making when you decide to get just two rats; (no it is not a bad thing to get two, but it isn’t the greatest, either, it leads to a lot of issues that you have to face In the later stages of owning rats.

If one of your rats suddenly and unexpectedly passes away, this leaves one rat behind, which is very difficult on the rat, both physically and mentally. You then have to scramble to source more rats, do a two week quarentine period in a seperate room (which means the lone rat will be alone for two weeks in addition to however long it takes you to source more rats) and then finally, introductions which tend to be very stressful and difficult for both you and the rats.

If one of your rats needs to be seperated for a certain reason. I.e surgery, this means the other rat will be alone for however long it takes for the rat to heal and recover, which isn’t very fair for that rat that is kept alone for no good reason.

In a group, rats tend to have a friend they prefer to spend more of their time with, going about, doing their day-to-day actives; cuddling, eating, foraging, etc. In a pair, they do not have this opportunity or to express their appropriate, natural social behaviours because they only have each other. This can build quite a lot of resentment, overtime.

Given, rats are hierarchal animals, in a pair, it is quite common to have an overly dominant and an overly submissive rat. Over time, this can lead to a lot of bickering and bullying because the dominant rat is not able to focus his attention on spending time with other rats. This does not make for a healthy hierachy.


r/RATS 5h ago

Bobas and boggles Boggling: IMAX 70mm edition 🤣

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✨👀✨👀✨👀✨


r/RATS 1h ago

MEME This idea has been stuck in my head for months

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God I hope it hasn't been done already


r/RATS 8h ago

CUTENESS system reboot in progress…

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r/RATS 1h ago

CUTENESS Sesame cuddles🥹

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This was the first time one of my girls has ever snuggled up and slept in my hood, couldn’t be happier to share this moment🥰


r/RATS 7h ago

CUTENESS DWTS? more like dancing with the rats 💃🏻

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she’s so sick of me 💀


r/RATS 10h ago

MEME Is this AI generated? The rat shaped creature changes shape multiple times and is being kneaded like dough without struggling, are they really that squishy?

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I thought yall would like this


r/RATS 14h ago

First time owner Does she like of hate this?

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Hello!

I was wondering if anyone could tell me of she likes this or not? These are my first rats and I have the feeling im doing something wrong, I dont know why bit it feels like it.

I have never had had rodents, only cats or dogs and they’re quite different in body language. So I was hoping some of you could tell me if im stressing my girls out or not.

Thank you!


r/RATS 9h ago

Crime🚨 arrest this rat

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attempting to eat my mattress topper 💔


r/RATS 17h ago

CUTENESS 🥟=🐁

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r/RATS 3h ago

CUTENESS I wish I could shrink myself to snuggle with them 🥺

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r/RATS 2h ago

CUTENESS Cute cuddly boys

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Since Blondie passed, the other two have become really cuddly. Defo at first it was because they were grieving, and it might still be the case, but I think since Blondie was their pillow all the time, they miss cuddling up to a big warm body (Blondie was huge compared to them) and also since I didn’t let them leave my side for a while, I think they also bonded to me stronger then before. Grief has brought us closer together, we already had a close relationship but so many people say when rats become cuddly is when you gotta start worrying, and maybe that’s what’s going on, but because all this started happening after Blondie passed, I think they honestly are just finding something with me that they had with Blondie before. Because honestly that is what it feels like.

Sorry if this paragraph doesn’t make sense, the text is kinda just a rant, I am doing much better since Blondie passed away, I still miss him every day, but the rant was just trying to put my thoughts into words

Edit: Yoshi in the first picture immediately got up and left me after I posted this lol


r/RATS 8h ago

CUTENESS Heart Shaped Ears ❤️🥰

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This is my boy Ralphy, he has big heart shaped dumbo ears ❤️ They get a lil waxy so I help him clean them from time to time 😆 had him since he was a tiny pocket size chicken nugget. His ears definitely match his personality! He is full of love and cuddles 🫶


r/RATS 2h ago

CUTENESS Welcome home Chip, Zumi and Winnie💞

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Chip and Zumi are family of my very first rat i had 5 years ago... the love of my life Quinn 💞

They are all already loved by my other boys Chibi, Mochi and Koko🥰


r/RATS 22h ago

MEME Was taking picture of my boys and noticed the whisker explosion in the background 😂

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r/RATS 16h ago

RIP Fergus passed away.

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He had a hard life, though I wish he didn't. The pet store I rescued him from used him to breed rats as snake food. Once he was no longer viable, they put him up for sale. He had a horrible UTI, respiratory infection, lice and fleas. I bought him, thinking I was giving him a quiet place to die comfortably...

But after some vet care and lots of attention, he perked up 🖤 I got to enjoy his company for much longer than I expected.

He was a very good rat 🖤 I'm going to miss him terribly.


r/RATS 13h ago

Questions/HELP Sneezies

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My first girl is a rescue feeder and she has always been a bit sneezy. A month ago it got worse to the point where she was having sneeze attacks lasting several minutes and showing visible discomfort, and her sneezes sounded painful. The vet gave me antibiotics which worked, then it came back. Got more antibiotics (Baytril), gave them to her for a week and the sneezing went away so I stopped. But now a week later she’s back to it. Not as bad, but still having episodes of up to 50 sneezes/min. Should i keep trying antibiotics, or separate her from her cage mates (not preferable because I don’t want her to be sick and lonely), or try something else? Could it just be a chronic condition? The only bedding I use is dried wood shavings in a dig box and dust free paper bedding for the litter boxes. Any advice is appreciated!


r/RATS 15h ago

CUTENESS Can my rat solve the maze?

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r/RATS 5h ago

Questions/HELP Dumbo???

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Does my boy seem to be a dumbo? I have had dumbos before, girls but, years ago. Recently I rescued these two boys, one of them seems to have standard ears, and this guy Joey I immediately noticed his ears were bigger, but I was looking it up at first and was reading he could just have bigger than average standard ears. But the more pictures I look at and the more I look at his ears I’m starting to think he’s a dumbo, but am not fully sure. Opinions? If he is ill be ecstatic as I’ve always wanted a male dumbo😝

‼️‼️This cage is temporary until their 2-3 week quarantine is over and they’re big enough to go into the larger cage with their big brothers‼️‼️


r/RATS 2h ago

Questions/HELP Lost two front teeth

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Max fell to the floor from the top of her cage last week. She didn’t seem to be fazed by it, but I checked that none of her limbs were broken or hurt and left it at that.

Over the weekend I noticed that she wasn’t as active as usual, and she was drinking a lot. I thought she might have an infection, but after observing her for a few hours I realized that she wasn’t eating properly. She would pick up a pellet and sit with it for a while, but she wasn’t actually biting on it. She and her two sisters get a small amount of hemp seeds and linseed with each meal, and that was all she was able to eat.

I’ve been feeding her human baby food for a couple of days, until I finally managed to get her to the vet this morning. It turns out both her upper front teeth are missing, the lower two are intact. The vet wasn’t able to determine if the growth zones were affected, but I’m hopeful…

For now she’s on soft food. She won’t eat pellets softened with water, so I’m trying to find healthy alternatives that can sustain her for a couple of weeks.

If you have been through something like this, did the tooth/teeth end up regrowing, and what soft foods did you give?


r/RATS 11h ago

CUTENESS The greed, the greed is taking over

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r/RATS 2h ago

Questions/HELP This is ground for a vet visit, isn't it? 🥺 NSFW Spoiler

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I woke up today with Natsumi having one of her ears very red. I'm gonna assume it's blood, but what do you guys think? Am I right in my assumption?


r/RATS 10h ago

CUTENESS This love how my rats sleep

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r/RATS 47m ago

CUTENESS Those are books not a bed >:(

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Spent so much money on her cage only for her to wanna get out and then jump on my shelf to sleep on/between/behind my books 😮‍💨