I really want a few ratties as pets, but I can't deal with how short their lives are.
My rat Zoomer was born over a year before covid hit and he's still zoomin'. :blob-no-thoughts:
But his brother (littermate) isn't. :sadness: So your point still stands.
Oh wow, what kind of rat is he? That’s a really long life for most rats
He's a (neutered) black and white hooded. I gave him a mini cupcake twelve days ago to celebrate his third birthday. Since he became an old man rat he likes to sleep in bed with me snuggled inside my t-shirt or between my legs. My cat, Simon, is also very affectionate towards Zoomer and grooms him a lot (which is probably my favorite thing to watch ever).
I've heard first hand accounts of rats that live past four but that's probably like 1 out of 100 rats.
Oh yeah so just a normal domestic rat! Wow that’s really impressive. I work with rats doing aging research and I don’t see a lot make it past 3 years. He’s so damn cute, I love rats.
I work with rats doing aging research
Neato. Can you create a drug or gene for me that makes rats live for 20 years? Please and thank you. I can venmo you $20 for the R&D. :blob-no-thoughts:
I don’t see a lot make it past 3 years.
I think Zoomer's proclivity for exercise has helped his longevity. I give him a lot of space and time to free roam and enrich himself, and I imagine that's really difficult to do in a laboratory setting where you need to work with a large volume of rats to get reliable population data.
But three years is pretty rare for me too. Zoomer is only the second rat I've had to have made it past that age, out of maybe a dozen rats I've had for which I know their exact DOB.
The one thing I know from my research stuff is to not let them just eat as much as they want whenever they want. Calorie restriction and delays between feeding seem to help a lot, I saw one study that feeding them a large amount every other day instead of every day increased lifespan a lot. The calorie restriction one is more important though, the ones who have free access to infinite food do so much worse in every metric.
Thanks for the pro tip! I do like to spoil my rats but I always make sure their treats are small portions. I don't feed ad libidum, so it's good to hear that's the right strategy. It's easy to tell when they're hungry: they line up side-by-side near the cage door and make noise 😛. Maybe I should calculate exactly how many calories they need and use a 500 gram scale to measure their portions, like I do for my cats.
Do you know to what degree this applies as just a later in rat-life thing? Like... say you have a rat that eats whatever they want whenever they want for their first 2 years. But henceforth are on diets of heavy caloric restriction, or diets with long lengths of time between calorie intake (fasting). Do those rats still seem to reap the lifespan gains? Or do they pretty much have to be on the restrictive diets most of their lives to see any real benefit in terms of life span and/or health in old age?
Asking for a rat friend of course.
From what I understand the earlier you start the caloric restriction the better. My thesis project is specifically on long term intermittent fasting started in middle age, so my rats were either free fed until 18 months or until 30 months, and the 30 month ones did worse in every way. But starting it even earlier is associated with better outcomes.
Also this does seem to somewhat carry over to humans, certainly not in all the specific details but as a general rule “be hungry sometimes” is unfortunately good for your health :deeper-sadness:
That's roughly what I assumed. :( Obviously, it would be nice to think that years of very unrestricted calorie intake could be "undone" by adhering to a very strict and severe calorie restricted diet later on, but that goes against intuition, and it looks like the science agrees.
I like to fast sometimes these days (my longest was a 10 day water fast) and genuinely feel like it has significant benefits, but I also realize that as I approach 40, some shit just is as it is and there's no going back and fixing it.
What a fascinating and broadly meaningful project to work on for your thesis! Maybe worth mentioning for the coincidence of it if nothing else: my sister, back in the early 00's did similar studies with rats, ageing, and nutrition for her PhD thesis. I wish I remembered the details better, but it wasn't specifically about caloric restriction. She's a tenured prof at a community college now and writes multimedia textbooks for low-cost or free distribution (because fuck the textbook industry racket). Anyway... massive respect for you delving into the science of this stuff.
if they lived longer they'd probably be writing messages to us by year 10.
That's funny because I have (and have had) several ratties as pets and I can't deal with how short their lives are lol.
It's not fair. :kitty-cri:
But then the only thing that heals the pain is a new rat. It's an endless cycle of joy and love and heartbreak. To have loved and lost, etc. They are tourists on this world and their departure date is set in stone. All I can do is make their visit as pleasant beautiful as possible. :kitty-cri-texas:
It's not just that, but to ensure they don't die miserably you're looking at a pretty pricey exotic pets vet bill every time they get sick lol
And increasingly pricey every year. All the independent clinics are being bought up by hedge funds, so pretty soon only PMCs will be able to afford pets (if that's not the case already). :porky-happy:
this is genuinely useful as it will help me avoid getting attacked by one of the wild rats
I'm only worried about scared rats to be honest as animals are mainly dangerous when they're scared
Just carry around some violife in your pocket as an offering, and you will have safe passage through the Byzantine subterrain
I love it when you remove the lid from a box of sleeping rats and they all look up with that cute, confused sleepy face with their chompers dorkily visible.
That's why I'm Sleepy Rat.
Rats boggle their eyes when they're happy, looked SO weird when I first saw it. I thought something was wrong with it, turns out it was just super happy and relaxed.
