Infant, baby, and adolescent rats need special handling in order to become well socialized. By well-socialized I mean, able to tolerate being handled, held, moved, picked up, examined, poked, and prodded. We would like a rat to be friendly and interested in us, willing to come to us on her own.

A well-socialized pet rat may more easily tolerate an emergency grab, or a difficult vet exam, or our need to clip his nails.

This page has some videos found on YouTube that visually explore what interacting with baby rats means, in the best sense. They do not capture all aspects of socializing a baby, but they are great to watch.

In this video, Mowgli, baby rat, grooms his human. Helping baby rats explore the human skin is fundamental to bonding.

In this video, a human hand is playing with baby rats. There is a lot of work that should come before this, that will set the stage for babies to trust you. This video has great shots of babies wrestling with each other as well.

When you have worked with very young baby rats, carefully, as the rat ages, she may become this baby in terms of calm behaviors.

And another one. To my mind this is a standard we would like to achieve with a well-socialized baby rat.