She was cute. Big girl too! The only rat I ever had around that size was Ritz, and he was a boy. Because of that I always thought the females were always a lot smaller, but I guess this proves that theory wrong.

Unfortunate what happened to her, but at least you were there for her. I love how people just assume rats are mean because they're bit after grabbing them by the tail and being rough with them.

Many people get petstore ones and four out of five times the female is smaller, petstores are mainly bred for snake bait even if it's called " Fancy rat" so they need to be small, but when it comes to bred rats that where made for absolute perfection on the basis of health, the female can sometimes double from the size of a Store female, we've had a male that reached one foot long without tail( with he was about 19-20 inches, and a female that was 13 inches =3.

But this is also different depending on the breed, if you get a tailess ,the female never gets much longer then what it was at 6 months, basicaly 6 inches or less. If you get a Downunder, they never make 5 inches, african longears rarly reach past 4 inches. Yet at the same time rats with the zucker gene( obesidy disorder) can get to be 4 pounds and 14 inches or more. Rats that are bred pursposly for size " berksires come to mind" are around a foot or less. And finaly the Gambian pouched rat can reach the size of a small dog, 5-7 pounds,2 feet at the shoulder and 2 1/2 feet long.

Sakura and family where bred from Petstore Rats that someone mated for fun( never should be done just for fun) and ended up with a bunch of unsocial biting rats due to not handling the babies. So when they got older and needed to be seperated at five weeks, the people got bit,then the kid got bit, this ended in S Sanomie Rats being brought to us insted of put down, and my sister gave me three weeks, if I couldint get them socialized it would be more pain to the rats if we kept them. Which ment they would be put down. So a week before the deadline I had no other choice but to put them with my rats and see if they could teach the S-sanomie that I was good. Sure enough a day later they ran to the front of the cage like everybody els =3! And that was when they where officialy a part of the family <3. I've never been bitten by rats , and we've had rescues since the very beginning, my sisters been bit, many of her friends, but for some reason they never bite me o-o.. This is one of the reasons my sister started giving me the rescues before we adopted them out cause I've successfuly socialized 35 rescues of all sizes and ages. If I could find a wild rat that isint freaked out, I'd have no problem grabing it. Once one got stuck in our bucket of water, so I carried him out and poured the bucket so he'd be wild once again =3, he wasint scared ether. So I doupt I'd be bit.

Anyways back on subject, They where bred from petstore, so it was weird to see them get so big, but it is possable if the breeder was a pet breeder before they whent feeder breeder. Same could have happened with your ritz if he wasint from a rattery, and some ratteries breed feeders and pets due to the big income they get for feeders.. Sick but true X-X..

I've never been bit, though I've been nibbled by a hungry rat biting a finger instead of a treat before. :p I'm no expert like you, but do you think it has to do with the age you get them and being patient enough to let them sniff your fingers when you first meet them before you grab them? I've been to a q&a with one of the animators that worked on Templeton in the new Charlotte's Web, and he said the rat they used for reference bit them all the time, which made me wonder what they did to it (I don't think they were being intentionally cruel to it as much as just not knowing how to handle a rat).

This is irrelivant, but I was wondering if you've ever seen the video about the experiment on rat laughter. In case you haven't here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-admRGFVNM

It's interesting. Really makes me miss my rats though.