And he's down for the count! 1!...2!...3!

[Joe]

   Well, I'm pretty sure I now officially know who's gonna be my dominant rat. The beige capped has pinned both the other boys twice that I've seen tonight, and the other two don't show any interest in being alpha rat. It was so cute!

-Joe
?     ?     ?

[emmamay]

this sounds really dumb but you do you( people in general) call the dominant male the alpha rat...just wondering.
thanks

[Joe]

   The terms dominant and alpha are interchangable. You'll se both used, but they mean the same thing.

-Joe

[Ali]

As they're still babes you'll probably find that the dominant rat keeps appearing to change. I kept thinking one was the alpha, then changed my mind! Now that they're a bit older though (about 4 1/2 months) I think Roger is slowly taking over prime position. But who know how it'll be next week??!

[rogermerriman]

Well of course Roger would be the alfa! For that is his role in life!
I have three boys, two young ones about 11 weeks and a old boy at 22 months. The old rat Tom is the Alfa and within the two young one Felix is alfa. But this could change as Boris can be forceful as well, he managed to knock big old tom over the other day by pouncing at high speed! Though he looked a bit worried at that point! He knew what was going to happen when Tom got back up!

[Jen at PRC]

Even when my two boys were one years old there wasn't an obvious alpha rat....  during playful wrestling matches both get flipped over about the same amount.  Here are some cute pictures of them wrestling:

http://www.petratscanada.com/wrestling.htm

[Ali]

Hi Jen - great pics! Just wondering what colour you call Korskoff? We had a debate about what colour my rat, Roger, could be in a previous post - he's not black, but a very dark brown, rather like Korskoff appears in his pics. He's not chocolate-y enough to be chocolate! My hooded boy and my old hooded does were the same dark brown.

What d'you think??!!

[rogermerriman]

I liked that, its fun watching them play. my little one get very frisky with each other!

[Maggie's Mom]

But alphas and dominant ras are not always male...many times I think the females are even tougher on eachother.  For example, Maggie used to be Alpha, then when Harley grew up she became alpha, and then shadow and mozy came along and harley still stayed alpha...and then rizzo came along and when Harley tried to assert dominance over riz, riz flipped harl onto her back and is now top rat even though she's about half the size of most of the girls, and a fourth the size of maggie.  size just doesn' matter

[Jen at PRC]

Hi Jen - great pics! Just wondering what colour you call Korskoff? We had a debate about what colour my rat, Roger, could be in a previous post - he's not black, but a very dark brown, rather like Korskoff appears in his pics.

Well, my digital camera tends to really bring out the reds in anything, hence it brings out the small amount of rust coloured fur that Korsakoff has...  he really appears quite black in real life so I refer to him as black even though his coat has rusted a bit as he has matured.  Maybe non-show-quality black would best describe his coat?  

[Rat-love]

Even when my two boys were one years old there wasn't an obvious alpha rat....  during playful wrestling matches both get flipped over about the same amount.  Here are some cute pictures of them wrestling:

http://www.petratscanada.com/wrestling.htm

Wow--Rimsky and Korsakoff!  Heh heh.  I wish I had thought of that.  I love Rimsky-Korsakov/koff/however they do it: actually, almost any romantic era Russian composer, really.  My parents' dogs are named Abby and Wolfie for short, after Abigail and Wolfgang Amadeus... you guessed it... Mozart.   Excellent captions on the pictures, too!