To be perfectly clear, domestic rats and wild rats are different. Domestic rats are bred to express behaviors appropriate for living with humans. But either way, they are incredibly smart, clean, and capable of a lot of love and compassion.

There have been many experiments to investigate rat social behavior, which show that they will ignore food in order to help another rat “in trouble,” even if they’ve never met that rat before. They will also show friendliness to a new rat from a different species if they have met and interacted with a different rat from that species before.

As the video explains, rats do have a very short lifespan. Two years is good for a domestic rat, and I’ve been in full weep over losing them. I just can’t do that anymore, it’s too often.