Pls. help - Science fair project - top vs. dumbo temperament

[fexpress]

Hi all,

My daughter is doing her science fair project on our rat family. It will include such things as rat care and rats as pets, rat growth curves, information on their community lifestyle, etc.

We would really love some input from the Rat Shack group, as our family is only 4 (2 tops, 2 dumbos) so our sampling too small to be useful.

Our observation has been our top-ears (Fergie and Hazel) are WAY more outgoing. They are always the first ones to explore the cage when it's been changed up. They are uber-confident.

Our dumbos (Pez and Olive) are a LOT more nervous and jittery...slow to warm up to new people, situations, cage changes.

However, we don't know if it's nature or nurture. Pez and Olive are from the same litter. Fergie and Hazel are from different litters altogether, from each other and from our dumbos.

Out of curiosity, can you please answer the following poll, for each of your rats (one answer for each rat...just add up multiples in the same category and answer for the group as a whole). You can make multiple selections. I hope we've made enough options to cover those of you with really large families. :giggle: We would also welcome any comments you may have.

Thank you, we really appreciate your help!

 

[fexpress]

Thank you everyone who is helping!

 

[jorats]

Very interesting! I hope you let us know of the results.

 

[fexpress]

We definitely will! It's interesting, but at a quick glance it looks like for the most part, everyone else is having a similar experience to us.

We're planning to post another one asking about whether alphas tend to be tops or dumbos, because we have some experience with that as well, and are really curious. In our family, one of our tops is the alpha, despite the fact that she's about 50 grams smaller than our larger dumbo. It's bizarre really.

Very interested to see how this all shakes down!

 

[M0onkist]

Do you want a sort of historical list of all our rats, their ear shapes and their temperaments?

I've only got two top-ears right now, but I've had a smattering of both over time (7 top ears, 2 dumbos - surprised it's as few dumbos as that...).

 

[fexpress]

Do you want a sort of historical list of all our rats, their ear shapes and their temperaments?

I've only got two top-ears right now, but I've had a smattering of both over time (7 top ears, 2 dumbos - surprised it's as few dumbos as that...).

I would love any and all...just add up the totals in each category and add them to the poll. Thanks!

 

[hopefloats]

I am confused why they are doubled it seems? the numbers have 4 selections but all the selections are based the same for dumbos and standard ear.... what am i missing here?

see?

1 Top eared - very confident, outgoing, not nervous
1 Top eared - nervous and jittery, hangs back
1 Dumbo - very confident, outgoing, not nervous
1 Dumbo - nervous and jittery, hangs back
2 Top eareds - very confident, outgoing, not nervous
2 Top eareds - nervous and jittery, hangs back
2 Dumbos - very confident, outgoing, not nervous

 

[fexpress]

I am confused why they are doubled it seems? the numbers have 4 selections but all the selections are based the same for dumbos and standard ear.... what am i missing here?

see?

1 Top eared - very confident, outgoing, not nervous
1 Top eared - nervous and jittery, hangs back
1 Dumbo - very confident, outgoing, not nervous
1 Dumbo - nervous and jittery, hangs back
2 Top eareds - very confident, outgoing, not nervous
2 Top eareds - nervous and jittery, hangs back
2 Dumbos - very confident, outgoing, not nervous

We're trying to find out the total number in each category that you have. So if you have 3 confident top eared, 4 nervous dumbos and one nervous top eared, you'd mark all 3 of those options before you submitted your response.

Does that make sense? We were trying to make it possible for people with large rat families to provide us with information, which would be really helpful to our project.

 

[hopefloats]

well hmmmm lol i have a lot of rats which would take some major thinking, i will have to do the math....

 

[fexpress]

We'd really appreciate the information if you have the time. Thank you.

 

[M0onkist]

I've put all of them in together - they didn't live together (for the most part, there has been overlap the last two sets of rats). I wish I had a less longitudinal set of data for you though! I also categorized 'shy and retiring' in the 'nervous and jittery' category - all very handleable, of course, just less gregarious than the others. If that isn't okay, just let me know and I'll change it.

 

[Petunia]

I've only got one dumbo and she is a very confident alpha rat!!

my top eared rats have been both very confident, somewhat confident and shy/nervous

interesting poll

 

[Bundyrats]

I voted. Two top eared's, very confident. But I also had two top-eared's that were not 'very' confident, nor where they jittery. They just did their thing as they pleased.

 

[fexpress]

I've put all of them in together - they didn't live together (for the most part, there has been overlap the last two sets of rats). I wish I had a less longitudinal set of data for you though! I also categorized 'shy and retiring' in the 'nervous and jittery' category - all very handleable, of course, just less gregarious than the others. If that isn't okay, just let me know and I'll change it.

That's perfect, that's exactly what we were wondering about.

 

[hopefloats]

I am still working on this. It isnt the ears but where they came from and the eyes too. My pews get more jittery but they have a hard time seeing. My boys are more nervous and my girls are fearless. I can say a huge majority of my rats are nervous and jittery when i get them there. It is because they were bred in horrible conditions and not socialized well. Do they stay that way, no, out of all my rats, which is a lot i have 3 standard ears that are nervous still, all males. Some rats just seem to love rats more than people. it may be nature, which i believe because babies are nervous and go through a phase of being skittish, but they get nurtured into being the socialized little fuzz butts that we all love.

That is what makes this difficult for me to answer, it isnt the ears at all, it is the places they lived.

 

[Rat_fancier]

My two dumbos, who are sisters, are cautious, and it took them a long time to warm up to me, especially because there's a cat in the house. My top-eared girl, who is about 150% the size of the dumbos, is basically a puppy in a ratsuit, very outgoing and totally fearless. She is not very afraid of the cat, either.

 

[fexpress]

My two dumbos, who are sisters, are cautious, and it took them a long time to warm up to me, especially because there's a cat in the house. My top-eared girl, who is about 150% the size of the dumbos, is basically a puppy in a ratsuit, very outgoing and totally fearless. She is not very afraid of the cat, either.

That's been our experience too, minus the cat. Our dumbos are sisters from the same litter, our two top ears are from two separate litters, one older, one younger than the dumbos. We wondered if it was just us having this experience, but are looking forward to concluding the poll and seeing what y'all have experienced.