Through Human Eyes: Owner Insights into the Social Relationships of Pet Rats

Understanding the social relationships and behaviours of pet rats is important, particularly because they are comparatively understudied compared to their laboratory and wild counterparts, and little is known about their welfare. Here, open-ended interviews, with a particular focus on rat social relationships and behaviours, were conducted with 23 pet rat owners in the United Kingdom and a reflective thematic analysis was conducted on the resulting, transcribed dataset. Seven main themes were generated: Social Behaviours, Social Life and Group Dynamics, Introducing New Rats and Repairing Social Bonds, Owner Practices, Participant and Rat Contextual Background, Owner Narratives and Shared Understandings, and Owner Research Interests. Owners described rat social relationships and behaviours with a high level of consistency and reported the techniques they employ to manage the social dynamics of their rat groups, including the first scientific report of rat introductions. We propose that these qualitative findings can inform future research, including observational studies of captive (pet and non-pet) rat management and welfare.