Francisco Cortez
Aldrich Chan
Benson Tran

Rat Project: Write Up

The rat project started out with our group going to the pet store to go buy a rat. We first bought a female medium sized rat and we chose her because she didn’t seem to be disturbed at the sight of humans. We worked with the rat and the strategies to train the rat to go through the maze are mentioned below. Everything was going well and we ended up naming the rat Minnie. By the 3rd week Minnie could go up all the way up the maze and somewhat ring the bell which marks the end of the maze. Inevitably all good things come to an end and on the 4th weekend she died of unknown reasons. It was determined that it wasn’t respiratory problems because she had no previous symptoms and after countless research we determined the reason from death was a seizure. We then came back to buy our second rat and this time it was baby white rat. We chose all females because the we felt that male rats were harder to handle, and because we heard their urine was more putrid. At this point in time, as a group we took every precaution that we could to prevent another tragic death. We changed the bedding to paper and sanitized the cage thoroughly, and I mean thoroughly. Sadly, the baby rat started sneezing and we returned her the next day and we had to exchange the rat for a precaution. It turned out that she did have respiratory problems. So our third rat was another white baby rat and the same thing happened. We were so frustrated that we just kind of stressed the baby rat out and we exchanged the rat because she was showing symptoms of a respiratory problem; stressing the rat out can cause the underlying respiratory problem to arise. Now we are on the fourth rat and we noticed how baby rats are too delicate so we got a medium sized rat. The rat was nice and energetic, but the problem was that she was somehow devastated of human touch. We named her Squeaky because of the shrieks, for example during the incident when we accidentally let her out of the cage she squeaked really loud when we were finally able to return her to her cage, most likely because of the human touch. We eventually returned her because she had a respiratory problem. This was two weeks until the end of the rat project and it was stressful and we just hoped that the fifth rat would be fine. Thankfully she was and she finished the maze in about one week and a half. I guess we were so experienced that we were able to teach her what she needs to know to get fed in the maze.. Setback after setback, we pushed through and got two rats through the maze. What we learned from our setbacks are that rats are really delicate creatures where intense watch and care are needed. We also learned that they are very intelligent, but require a some sort of push and incentive to be willing to explore new surroundings. It was noticed that they were very scared to venture even though they were active. Everytime the rat was trying to explore the maze, we had to stand still because any sudden movements would cause the rat to be scared and we didn’t want the rat to get the impression that the maze is a scary place to explore. Originally, the rat maze had four levels where the first and second levels are fused. The first level consists of a set of ascending wooden planks which then leads to a walkway that leads to another platform. From there, the rat would have to descend onto the top of a cage which falls to the bottom of the first level. It then has to travel to the right, go up to the ladder, go on top of another wooden plank with styrofoam on the opposite side, and finally reach the second level. The second level consists of three walls with holes and the rat had to go through the holes to get to the end of the left side, and then it had to climb up some more wooden planks. The third level had three rings the rat had to climb through, and a hole that the rat had to climb through to get to the fourth level. The last level only requires