My First Encounter with a Rat

Hello and welcome to my first blog ever! This blog will follow learning/behavioral changes and techniques that I will encounter as I train my rat this semester. As you can see in the picture to your right, I was not too happy when I found out I had to work with rats for my Psychology of Learning lab. I have dissected various animals including sharks, cats, pigs, frogs, turtles, a necturus, and heck even a human! However, I was discombobulated to even think about picking up/working with a rat. I had a stigma implanted in my mind, because I had a bad experience with them as a child when I lived in a rented townhouse by the Tennessee River bridge in Decatur, AL. Unfortunely, one day as I was watching TV I caught with my 3 year-old eye a fat, hairy black rat gnaw through the wood in our house. It ran fast right toward me. My parents got the house inspected, and we had to move because of all the damage several rats did. Ever since then I just thought of them to be evil curmudgeons lurking under houses and creepy alleyways that carried and transmitted diseases like the bubonic plague.  Suriphobia is a type of specific phobia of mice and/or rats. Yup, I most definitely had this before today’s encounter with my rat. My impression  changed drastically the moment I held the soft, timid rat. I was able to successfully pick up my rat for a whole 30 seconds!  My phobia was certainly desensitized today.  The rats we have are called hooded rats, which are black on the head and shoulder all the way down to the back while the rest of the coat is mainly white. I decided to name my rat “Ratna.” Besides the pun, I chose this name because it’s an Indian name which means “jewel” in Sanskrit. I hope to have many enjoyable experiences with my new friend Ratna, pictured below. Maybe she’ll be like the rat from one of my favorite Pixar-Disney’s movie, Ratatouille.

Taken from waltdisneycompany.com

My new friend, Ratna! :)