Thanks, that is useful information. I can use that as a detourant if he does try to bite again. I took him out of the group and put him in a seperate cage with another guy. He seems happier and hasn't bitten me again.

Age has a lot to do with behavior. Biting in rats is genetic and is passed on from parent to offspring. The older a rat is the more aggressive they can become. Personally i use an aggression scale to rate a rat at certain ages, 8 weeks, 4 months and 6 months and 18 months.

The scale ranges from 1 ,being best to 5, being worst. i never breed rats higher than a 2 on the scale. The problem with rats is telling if a bite is from true aggressive tendencies or a mistake. to many things can cause a rat to mistakenly nip.

A few questions.

1. Do you feed your rat through the bars of its cage at any time?
2. Did you breed the rat in question and if so did either parent nip?
3. Does the rat in question put up a fuss when you take him from his cage?
4. is the rat housed with more nultiple males?

I ask these questions because they will help determine if the rat truely is agressive.

First if your feed your rat through the bars of its cage at any time, Stop! This is a big no no as it will condition your rat to expect food every time the cage is opened and can translate out to when you are holding him and his face is approached. Rats have very poor eye sight. they live by their sense of smell and even if you have had a meal hours before they can still smell the food. Best thing to do is wash well before handling. I will often pick up and hold some kittens if im woring on socializing a rescue rat who is not friendly. that way the rat will smell the sent of those kittens over everything else. adult rats will not work for this as their sent will denote their maturity.

If the parents of the rat are known nippers then you are fighting an uphill battle with little chance of a favorable out come.

If the rat is fussy when you remove him from his cage then all that is needed is a lot of TLC. be social with him as much as you possable can. one trick to quickly build trust is to allow him to enter his cage from your hand under his own power. let him hop off your hand rather than placing him back in the cage.

Please note also that the rat is just like us he will not always show how he is feeling.

Another thing i have noticed is with males in particular. housing several males together can cause issues as they mature. The rats jokey for position of dominance and the developing pecking order can cause a rat to be more aggresive and more easily irritated.

I found this out the hard way recently when i built a very large cage that houses ten males of various ages upto 18 months of age. Everything was great for the first few weeks but as the males matured things started to get rough. Eventually everything worked out and everyone gets along just fine. it just had to run its course.

In short stress can cause a rat to act worse than they normally would. look for any possible stress that may be causeing this.

there are no real ways to train a rat not to bite, just loads of TLC and being social with the rat in question. I will often give a lite tap on the nose of my kittens when the go through their tasting everyhing stage and the quickly get the idea that it's not ok to nip.

Hope this helps.....