He's a (neutered) black and white hooded. I gave him a mini cupcake twelve days ago to celebrate his third birthday. Since he became an old man rat he likes to sleep in bed with me snuggled inside my t-shirt or between my legs. My cat, Simon, is also very affectionate towards Zoomer and grooms him a lot (which is probably my favorite thing to watch ever).
I've heard first hand accounts of rats that live past four but that's probably like 1 out of 100 rats.
spoiler
I've featured Zoomer in a few posts over the months because I'm a doting dad (1, 2, 3, 4).
Oh yeah so just a normal domestic rat! Wow that’s really impressive. I work with rats doing aging research and I don’t see a lot make it past 3 years. He’s so damn cute, I love rats.
Neato. Can you create a drug or gene for me that makes rats live for 20 years? Please and thank you. I can venmo you $20 for the R&D. :blob-no-thoughts:
I don’t see a lot make it past 3 years.
I think Zoomer's proclivity for exercise has helped his longevity. I give him a lot of space and time to free roam and enrich himself, and I imagine that's really difficult to do in a laboratory setting where you need to work with a large volume of rats to get reliable population data.
But three years is pretty rare for me too. Zoomer is only the second rat I've had to have made it past that age, out of maybe a dozen rats I've had for which I know their exact DOB.
The one thing I know from my research stuff is to not let them just eat as much as they want whenever they want. Calorie restriction and delays between feeding seem to help a lot, I saw one study that feeding them a large amount every other day instead of every day increased lifespan a lot. The calorie restriction one is more important though, the ones who have free access to infinite food do so much worse in every metric.
Thanks for the pro tip! I do like to spoil my rats but I always make sure their treats are small portions. I don't feed ad libidum, so it's good to hear that's the right strategy. It's easy to tell when they're hungry: they line up side-by-side near the cage door and make noise 😛. Maybe I should calculate exactly how many calories they need and use a 500 gram scale to measure their portions, like I do for my cats.
Do you know to what degree this applies as just a later in rat-life thing? Like... say you have a rat that eats whatever they want whenever they want for their first 2 years. But henceforth are on diets of heavy caloric restriction, or diets with long lengths of time between calorie intake (fasting). Do those rats still seem to reap the lifespan gains? Or do they pretty much have to be on the restrictive diets most of their lives to see any real benefit in terms of life span and/or health in old age?
From what I understand the earlier you start the caloric restriction the better. My thesis project is specifically on long term intermittent fasting started in middle age, so my rats were either free fed until 18 months or until 30 months, and the 30 month ones did worse in every way. But starting it even earlier is associated with better outcomes.
Also this does seem to somewhat carry over to humans, certainly not in all the specific details but as a general rule “be hungry sometimes” is unfortunately good for your health :deeper-sadness:
Yeah, had you adopted one when covid hit, it would already be dead
My rat Zoomer was born over a year before covid hit and he's still zoomin'. :blob-no-thoughts:
But his brother (littermate) isn't. :sadness: So your point still stands.
Oh wow, what kind of rat is he? That’s a really long life for most rats
He's a (neutered) black and white hooded. I gave him a mini cupcake twelve days ago to celebrate his third birthday. Since he became an old man rat he likes to sleep in bed with me snuggled inside my t-shirt or between my legs. My cat, Simon, is also very affectionate towards Zoomer and grooms him a lot (which is probably my favorite thing to watch ever).
I've heard first hand accounts of rats that live past four but that's probably like 1 out of 100 rats.
spoiler
I've featured Zoomer in a few posts over the months because I'm a doting dad (1, 2, 3, 4).
Oh yeah so just a normal domestic rat! Wow that’s really impressive. I work with rats doing aging research and I don’t see a lot make it past 3 years. He’s so damn cute, I love rats.
Neato. Can you create a drug or gene for me that makes rats live for 20 years? Please and thank you. I can venmo you $20 for the R&D. :blob-no-thoughts:
I think Zoomer's proclivity for exercise has helped his longevity. I give him a lot of space and time to free roam and enrich himself, and I imagine that's really difficult to do in a laboratory setting where you need to work with a large volume of rats to get reliable population data.
But three years is pretty rare for me too. Zoomer is only the second rat I've had to have made it past that age, out of maybe a dozen rats I've had for which I know their exact DOB.
The one thing I know from my research stuff is to not let them just eat as much as they want whenever they want. Calorie restriction and delays between feeding seem to help a lot, I saw one study that feeding them a large amount every other day instead of every day increased lifespan a lot. The calorie restriction one is more important though, the ones who have free access to infinite food do so much worse in every metric.
Thanks for the pro tip! I do like to spoil my rats but I always make sure their treats are small portions. I don't feed ad libidum, so it's good to hear that's the right strategy. It's easy to tell when they're hungry: they line up side-by-side near the cage door and make noise 😛. Maybe I should calculate exactly how many calories they need and use a 500 gram scale to measure their portions, like I do for my cats.
Do you know to what degree this applies as just a later in rat-life thing? Like... say you have a rat that eats whatever they want whenever they want for their first 2 years. But henceforth are on diets of heavy caloric restriction, or diets with long lengths of time between calorie intake (fasting). Do those rats still seem to reap the lifespan gains? Or do they pretty much have to be on the restrictive diets most of their lives to see any real benefit in terms of life span and/or health in old age?
Asking for a rat friend of course.
From what I understand the earlier you start the caloric restriction the better. My thesis project is specifically on long term intermittent fasting started in middle age, so my rats were either free fed until 18 months or until 30 months, and the 30 month ones did worse in every way. But starting it even earlier is associated with better outcomes.
Also this does seem to somewhat carry over to humans, certainly not in all the specific details but as a general rule “be hungry sometimes” is unfortunately good for your health :deeper-sadness:
:deeper-sadness:
The point is them having been happy.
if they lived longer they'd probably be writing messages to us by year 10.