Where this page comes from. Very little has been published about keeping roof rats, so unless a line says otherwise, the framework here is adapted from the literature on fancy rats and laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus). Roof rats (Rattus rattus) are a different species. Where the two are known to differ, I say so on the page. Where something comes from my own colony, it is marked as mine.
Where the species differ
Stress looks different. Roof rats respond to threats and stress with intense flight, rather than the freeze-and-assess response of their cousin species. A taming timeline written for fancy rats will therefore read a normally reactive roof rat as aggressive or broken. It usually is not. Slow down instead of pushing.
These rats are a selected line. The calm handling described on this site follows eight years of breeding for it, and that tameness is inherited rather than trained. A roof rat from anywhere else will not start where these do, so treat the handling timelines here as what happened in one colony.
Reading behaviour. What a posture or a sound means is species-specific, and the signal-to-meaning mappings in general rat guidance were worked out on Norway rats. Watch your own animal before trusting any of them.
More on how the two animals differ: What is different about these rats.
Roof Rat Care › Roof Rat Bonding, Training & Behavior
- Bonding is staged. Work up to a rat taking treats while sitting on you; patience builds trust.
- Train by rewarding natural behaviors (catch-and-reward), never by forcing.
- Two kinds of “bad” behavior: the merely annoying versus the genuinely harmful, handled differently.
- They bond with their people and pets and have real preferences; introduce them slowly.
- Use safe bonding treats (blueberries, peas, pumpkin seeds), never almonds.
Just want quick answers? See the behavior & taming FAQ.
Roof rats are smart and affectionate once they trust you. Here is how to build that trust, teach a few tricks, work through nipping or other problems, and introduce them to people and pets.
On this page:
- Bonding with your Roof Rat
- Teaching your Roof Rat tricks
- Dealing with bad behaviours
- Introducing roof rats to each other
- Introducing Roof Rats to People or Pets
Bonding with your Roof Rat
Once your Roof Rat has progressed to Stage 5, and he is already willing to take treats from you and eat them while sitting on you, you are well on your way to bonding with your pet Roof Rat.
Roof Rats have 3 basic needs: safety, food and sex, in that order. If your Roof Rat doesn’t feel safe when he’s with you, then he will associate you with discomfort and unhappiness. He cannot bond with you under those circumstance.
Once your rat feels safe enough to eat treats while he’s with you, make sure that you always have some ready whenever it is playtime. Reward him with treats whenever he is with you, and he will learn to love you.
It really is that simple and predictable. I’ve found that safe treats like blueberries or green peas work great for this purpose.
This is Bao Bao:
I greeted him every day with a treat, and now he practically begs to come out to be with me, and doesn’t like to go back into his cage. I can put him on my desk, or on the sofa, and he will hang out with me for as long as I like. Pecan is not quite there, yet, but he could be if I keep rewarding him with treats. As far as I know, any Roof Rat that we breed as pets will bond with people in this way.
Once your rat is bonded with you, you can even keep him with you out of his cage all day, if you like. This is called “Free Ranging” and it is very enjoyable for both you and your rats. Here is Walter enjoying a day spent Free Ranging with me in my home office:
Teaching your Roof Rat tricks
The easiest way to train a Roof Rat is to reward a naturally occuring behaviour that is similar to the “trick” you want him to learn to do, while at the same time repeating the trigger word, sound or gesture that you want him to associate with that trick.
So, for example, if you want your Roof Rat to come when called, put him down someplace where he can run around a bit, but won’t easily get very far, and call him while holding out a treat (the reward.) He will eventually run toward the treat and, when he does, praise him and give him his reward. Practice this several times, in the same place, in the same way: each time, he will respond faster.
Once he masters “come when called” on (for example) the sofa, you want to “generalize” the command response. So, try the same thing, but on the floor instead of the sofa. Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t do as well at first: he needs to learn that it means the same thing when you call him, regardless of the context.
Also, instead of showing him the treat before you call him, keep it hidden and give him his reward after he’s earned it. Act happy and praise him whenever he does the right thing, so that he learns it is a social act of friendship, and not just about the treat. If your Roof Rat likes you, making you happy is also a reward for him!
Teaching him another trick is the same process: identify a naturally occuring Roof Rat behaviour, and praise and reward him for it when he performs it in the right context. For example, Roof Rats are great at standing on their hind legs, and they do it all the time. That’s not a “trick.” When they do it at the “right” time, in response to your command, that is a trick. To teach your Roof Rat to stand on his hind legs at your command, you just need to make sure he will want to do it anyway, then say the command when you think he’s going to do it, and praise and reward him after he does.
And how do you get a Roof Rat to stand up? No problem! Show him a treat just out of his reach. Like this:
Roof Rats are especially easy to train, because they are intelligent, always hungry, love treats, and they are always doing interesting behaviours that you can exploit as “tricks.” They will hop around, climb, jump, walk across narrow paths, etc. It’s really up to your imagination what you can “teach” them to do on command! Have fun!
Dealing with bad behaviours
There are two kinds of Roof Rat “bad behaviour”:
- Behaviour that is annoying or inconvenient, but is mostly harmless to them, their cage mates and their owners.
- Behaviour that is harmful, dangerous or otherwise totally unacceptable.
Annoying Roof Rat behaviours:
- Playing with their water bottles: Many Roof Rats love to play with their water bottles, and will enjoy endless fun, poking the little ball to get the water out, until the bottle empty and they and their litter are soaking wet. They will sometimes use the water to bathe themselves, or sometimes just toss it away as it comes out. Once they start doing this, they will never stop until you replace their water bottle with a water dish.
- Kicking their litter out of their cage: Roof Rats are pretty active, especially at night. If you have more than one in a cage, they will probably chase each other around occasionally for no apparent reason. If their litter is lightweight or their litter pan is too shallow, they will kick it out of their cage, and you will be sweeping it up every morning. Even if you use heavier litter, like Yesterday’s News, and your litter pan is deep, they will probably still kick some out anyway. Oh well.
- Chewing on stuff: Chewing is normal for Roof Rats and even necessary to keep their teeth from getting too long. They might chew on anything they can reach with their teeth. It’s your job as a responsible pet owner to make sure that they cannot reach anything dangerous or valuable. And that they cannot chew their way out of their cage. Hammocks, toys, even water dishes or bottles will all need to be replaced from time to time, so factor that into the cost of pet ownership.
- (Gently!) nipping fingertips: if you poke your finger near a Roof Rat’s mouth, they will sometimes gently nip or nibble on it. Sometimes, when you take one out, it will start gently nipping your hand after a bit. This is all about food. They want treats now. And you haven’t delivered quickly enough for them. Or, if they are used to you giving them treats through the bars of their cage, and you poke your finger in there instead of an almond, there could be a case of mistaken identity. Regardless, your roof rat isn’t trying to hurt you. If he actually wanted to bite you, he would do so to the best of his ability: in nature, Roof Rats don’t get a second chance to defend or attack, so if that’s what he wants to do, he’s not going to mess around. If it didn’t hurt, he didn’t want it to hurt.
- Making noise all night long: My Roof Rats’ cages are next to my bedroom door. I can confirm: they really do make noise all night long. They love rattling stuff and “arguing” with each other. Roof Rats are much more vocal than Norway Rats. If you are easily disturbed, it’s best to keep your Roof Rats away from your TV watching room and bedrooms.
- Screeching at strangers: some Roof Rats are territorial and really don’t trust people they don’t know. If a stranger comes near their cage, they will open their mouths wide, bare their teeth and screech or hiss at the trespasser. Kind of like this scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but much cuter:
Once they start doing this to strangers, you probably cannot make them stop until they learn to accept the “stranger.” Which may happen. Eventually. Someday. Or not…
- Peeing everywhere: Roof Rats often pee on stuff. It seems to be their way of saying “I like this, it belongs to me.” or “I’m the boss around here, so you get peed on.” The thought of a Roof Rat peeing on you out of love might seem a bit odd at first (and second, third…), but try to see it from their viewpoint: that’s how they mark you with their scent, so they and “everyone else” knows you are “their” person. Anyway, at least Roof Rats are small: imagine if a dog did that to you (I don’t have to imagine, unfortunately.)
Harmful or dangerous Roof Rat behaviours:
- Cage mates fighting: Sometimes, if you put an adult Roof Rat in the same cage with another adult or, sometimes, a baby, they will fight. Some amount of squabbling is acceptable, even expected, as the two Roof Rats work out whether they will tolerate sharing the space. But, if it goes on for more than a few hours, or if one or both gets injured, then you need to separate them. An adult Roof Rat is fully capable of hurting, even killing a rival who is unable to escape, so always exercise care when introducing them.
- Biting: Roof Rats rarely intentionally bite people to hurt them. I’ve never been properly bitten by an adult Roof Rat, and only once or twice by very fearful babies. Which didn’t hurt very much (except for my pride.) But there have been a few close calls, where a female Roof Rat nursing her babies clearly wanted to bite me if she could. Your Roof Rats probably won’t have babies, if they do, don’t stick your finger in a cage with a mommy rat in it. Seriously, don’t.
Sometimes, while play fighting with your Roof Rat, it might get too excited, and bite too hard. If that happens, you should pull your hand away, and make a loud “Squeak!” noise: he will realize he’s hurt you, and be more gentle in the future.
- Escaping, running away, hiding: This is a problem with baby Roof Rats, before they are properly socialized. In nature, Roof Rats are prey animals at the bottom of the food chain. Baby Roof Rats are defenseless little snacks for any carnivore that can catch them. So, they have evolved to be paranoid and as hard to catch as possible. Remember, these are prey animals, not apex predators like cats, so they will naturally react differently to exactly the same things:
Fortunately, we have selectively bred our Roof Rats to be less timid and flighty than their wilder cousins. Notice that, although Anya and Walter were clearly frightened by Baby Groot in the video, they did not jump down and run off, as a wild rat would have. However, always keep in mind that Roof Rats are still very good at escaping, evading and hiding when they feel like it. Follow our instructions on socializing babies, and make sure to handle them someplace safe until they trust you. Or get adults, instead.
The science behind their behaviour. A lot of what makes roof rats different as companions, their social structure, their arboreal smarts, and how tameness is inherited, is still genuinely open research. We gather those questions, each with the test that would settle it, on our open research questions hub.
Introducing roof rats to each other
A quick, honest caveat first: I have not set out to formally research roof rat social behavior. My goal has always been to avoid conflict that could lead to injuries, so I am risk averse and conservative about this. With that said, roof rats do seem to be socially different from Norway rats. I often liken them to cats versus dogs: helpful, if not fully accurate.
Norway rats will box a bit to sort out a pecking order, and once that is settled the group tends to stay friends for life. Roof rats do not seem to work that way. They do not appear to have a stable hierarchy or any concept of an alpha. Every roof rat acts as though the territory is his. He may willingly share it with a rat he treats as a friend, but he does not defer to that rat, and he reserves the right to withdraw his acceptance at any time. So when roof rats fight, it looks less like sizing each other up and more like trying to drive an unwanted rat out of the territory.
Because of that, I introduce sexually mature roof rats carefully, in a neutral space where neither one is trapped with the other. My first goal is simply that they do not immediately hate each other. Some adults are easygoing and rarely fight, others do not want any other adult, or even a youngster, in their space. If two rats fight right in front of me, I take that as my answer and do not house them together, full stop. Adults fighting over territory do not gently box the way Norway rats do, they can form a rat ball and go for each other’s vital organs, so I separate them fast. I have never tried to make two males learn to like each other, so I honestly do not know if it is possible. A rat that clearly wants to live alone just gets his own cage. I ignore the Norway-rat rule that a rat must always have a companion: roof rats do not read Reddit posts.
If they do seem to tolerate each other, I cautiously try housing them together and pull any rat that is getting injured right away. Roof rats are quieter by day and often save their fighting for the night when I am not watching, so I check everyone for fresh injuries each morning. Often one pugnacious individual is the whole problem, and the simplest fix is to give him his own cage. I do not assume the biggest rat is the bully: my smaller adult males have taken on larger rivals and won, going for the tail, the back or the neck, and even a female can bite the end off a male’s tail.
After a few days with no fighting, some snuggling, and maybe a bit of mutual grooming, I am hopeful that two rats will stay friends. That is not to say roof rats never show dominance behavior. In the short clip below, one of my roof rats is force-grooming his brother and cagemate. The brother does something a bit like Norway-rat boxing to ward off the grooming, which was apparently too rough or just unwelcome. Watch how they both stop the instant they notice me watching. These two genuinely liked each other and bullying was rare. In a case like this, where neither rat is actually getting injured, it is fine to keep them together.
Even a settled pair can be set off later. Rats introduced before they are sexually mature may turn territorial once they grow up, and males can get more territorial when there are females around. Even brothers may fight as adults or when females are present, though that is rarer. Once, after I separated an adult male to mate and then returned him, his cagemates fought him, so now I just put the female into the cage with the whole group of males instead. As in the wild, the fastest and healthiest males get to mate, which may help preserve the colony’s fitness. It does mean I usually attribute a litter to a group of brothers rather than to one specific male.
One important caution: I do not introduce a very young female to unfamiliar adults. I wait until she is clearly big enough to defend herself, because I have seen adult females kill babies that were not their own. I have not seen adult males do this, and introducing very young males to adults usually goes well.
Introducing Roof Rats to People or Pets
Roof Rats know who their “friends” are, be they rats, humans or other animals. Some (but not all) Roof Rats may develop strong preferences and bonds with their friends and, conversely, reject the presence of those who they don’t like.
For example, if a Roof Rat is handed by a “friend” to someone it doesn’t know or trust, it may immediately leap back to it’s friend or, if that’s not possible, to any nearby object or the floor. When we first started breeding Roof Rats, there were some which were very territorial. If a stranger, be it animal or human, approached their cage, those Roof Rats could even bare their teeth and screech or hiss to “drive off” the intruder. If an intruder dared to enter a territorial Roof Rat’s cage, there could be…trouble.
Fortunately, after generations of selective breeding, it is rare to see that kind of behaviour now. But that is not to say that all Roof Rats are thrilled to share their space with total strangers, either. It’s hard to imagine that a small animal can be that opinionative, but they can. Pre-adolescent Roof Rats (less than 3 months old) are almost always still open to making new friends. But, fully mature adult Roof Rats may have already decided who their “circle of friends” will be, and if you aren’t a member of that exclusive club, it can be very hard to get an invitation.
Conversely, if your Roof Rat is young, he can eventually accept almost anyone, or anything, as a friend, provided that the person or animal doesn’t give him any reason not to. If the other rat, cat or dog (for example) is friendly and gentle, you may cautiously introduce it to your young Roof Rat under strict supervision. Keeping in mind that dogs or cats can quickly kill a Roof Rat: that used to be their “job”, after all! I suggest that a different people securely restrain the animal and the Roof Rat, then slowly bring them together as you carefully judge their reaction to each other: at the slightest sign of fear or aggression, immediately separate them.
As for adult Roof Rats, if you got them from us, we can advise you how friendly they are. If not, we don’t recommend putting two adult strangers in the same cage. A baby may be OK with an adult, but even then it’s not guaranteed. In particular, it is better to wait until a Roof Rat is 7-8 weeks old before introducing it too an adult female unless you know for sure that adult is friendly, so the younger one has a chance to defend itself in case it is attacked. If you know that an adult is unfriendly, don’t try to put another Roof Rat in the same cage. It’s not worth the risk.
If the Roof Rat is hissing at a new person or animal, you can try to desensitize the Roof Rat by putting the cage near to the person for long persons of time (for example, next to the sofa where the person watches TV.) After a while, the Roof Rat will probably get tired of hissing at the person and might eventually let the person feed him snacks. Or he might not. Roof Rats are very stubborn animals. I wish I could offer more advice, but it’s really up to the Roof Rat to decide.
The sounds they make: the startle “scold”
Most of the time roof rats are quiet. But every so often one will startle himself, miss a jump, knock something over, take a tumble, then freeze and give you a piece of his mind. It is a fast, staccato “eh-eh-eh-eh” (or “uh-uh-uh”), almost like an indignant telling-off. Here is Walter doing exactly that after he fell into a bin and leapt back out. I laughed at him, and he did not appreciate it one bit.
Here is the strange part. When we went looking, we could not find this particular call described anywhere in the scientific literature on roof rats. The famous rat “alarm call” is ultrasonic, pitched too high for people to hear, and the audible rat sounds that have been studied are pain squeaks and close-range threat calls, not this freeze-and-scold. So we ran the audio from Walter’s clip through a spectrogram (below). It is a rapid pulse train, about ten “eh”s per second, spread across a wide band of frequencies with a distinctive buzz up around 6 to 7 kHz. A harsh, pulsed sound, not a clean whistle. These are rough numbers from a single phone recording rather than a lab measurement, but they are a real first look.
We have turned this into one of our open research questions, because as far as we can tell, nobody has formally documented or measured it. If you keep roof rats and have heard the same noise, we would love to hear from you.