Last night I witnessed something with our rat Sushi, and I'm really curious to hear what you guys think of it. Mainly, I'm trying to figure out if I'm nuts and overreacting, or if Sushi really did do what I think she did.
Quick backstory - Sushi has severe malocclusion and her upper and lower incisors never touch (no amount of trimming or angling is going to make that happen). I've posted before about her and you can see pictures of her teeth at our blog (http://bentorats.blogspot.com/2011/02/teeth-trimming-pt-2.html is a good starting spot). Sushi does okay with her teeth - she needs to eat softer foods but really does okay overall. She has access to a variety of foods and is small but a healthy weight.
Last night I noticed she was hanging out by their water bottle. A couple of lab blocks were underneath the bottle. Sushi doesn't normally eat lab blocks (they're too hard for her) but we have them for her sister Saké. Anyway, while I watched, Sushi repeatedly bumped into the water bottle spout with her shoulder, sending drops of water onto the lab block directly below. She wasn't moving around while doing this, so it didn't look like she was hitting the water bottle inadvertently. In fact, it seemed pretty systematic. After a few moments, the lab block was pretty drenched at the top and judging by the color, the water was soaking into the entire thing. While I watched, Sushi carefully used her hands to pull off the wettest parts of the lab block and ate it (she started at one end and worked to the other end, until the entire top layer was gone). Then she carried the less wet but still damp remaining bottom half to her nest and finished it there.
So, am I nuts? Is this just coincidental? Or did she actually soften her own food? I've seen other examples of just how smart the girls are (one day their water bottle leaked and when I found it, they had carefully moved EVERYTHING off the floor in the wet part of their cage and moved it all to dry areas) but I also don't want to be completely overreacting.
Sarah
http://bentorats.blogspot.com/
Quick backstory - Sushi has severe malocclusion and her upper and lower incisors never touch (no amount of trimming or angling is going to make that happen). I've posted before about her and you can see pictures of her teeth at our blog (http://bentorats.blogspot.com/2011/02/teeth-trimming-pt-2.html is a good starting spot). Sushi does okay with her teeth - she needs to eat softer foods but really does okay overall. She has access to a variety of foods and is small but a healthy weight.
Last night I noticed she was hanging out by their water bottle. A couple of lab blocks were underneath the bottle. Sushi doesn't normally eat lab blocks (they're too hard for her) but we have them for her sister Saké. Anyway, while I watched, Sushi repeatedly bumped into the water bottle spout with her shoulder, sending drops of water onto the lab block directly below. She wasn't moving around while doing this, so it didn't look like she was hitting the water bottle inadvertently. In fact, it seemed pretty systematic. After a few moments, the lab block was pretty drenched at the top and judging by the color, the water was soaking into the entire thing. While I watched, Sushi carefully used her hands to pull off the wettest parts of the lab block and ate it (she started at one end and worked to the other end, until the entire top layer was gone). Then she carried the less wet but still damp remaining bottom half to her nest and finished it there.
So, am I nuts? Is this just coincidental? Or did she actually soften her own food? I've seen other examples of just how smart the girls are (one day their water bottle leaked and when I found it, they had carefully moved EVERYTHING off the floor in the wet part of their cage and moved it all to dry areas) but I also don't want to be completely overreacting.
Sarah
http://bentorats.blogspot.com/
