Rat Staring Contest

By request, here’s an updated edit of the Rat Staring Contest without the background music, so every squeak can be heard! This video was the number one video on G4’s Attack of The Show, was shown on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (14th April 2009) and also Animal Planet’s Untamed and Uncut! The cage in the video is a hamster cage and is much, much too small for even a single rat. They don’t live in it and was used only for introducing these two pairs in a confined space. They live in a huuuge cage with many hammocks, ropes and soft beds, so no worries guys ;) Rats perform this bizarre behaviour when they feel their dominance is being threatened, but nowhere else have I ever heard of rats standing up like this for over five minutes straight at a time! Normally it should be for just a couple of seconds. I believe these two brothers learned that by looking busy with each other like this, the older rats wouldn’t challenge them.