Quinn and her rat Lecter

[mrose_s]

So this is Quinn and Lecter. Quinn has been fascinated by these rats from day 1 and I THINK they are starting to like her back.
She's been trying to play with them for the past week, woofing and play bowing and throwing her head around.
I tried to explain that they don't speak dog but she's kept trying.
They get free time on this table whenever I'm busy but at home and she does have rules, no poking, no paws on the table and no sticking her nose in their cubby and hassling them.

I wanted to put this up and ask the people on here that are more experienced with rats and their body language if what is going on is okay. Quinn is obviously trying to play and I think it looks like Lecter is engaging her as well but I want some more experienced eyes.

I tried to get some more video tonight, Lecter is now going out of his way to approach her and will pounce towards her in what I think is a playful way. There are no teeth or sounds.

Here is the link. Hope it works, I did this all on my phone.

http://youtu.be/p6CLhyeTutw

Ps. Sorry about the background noise, I had found "extreme couponing" on YouTube before I steered filming.

 

[frostfell]

in my experience, rats will NOT hesitate to bite the holy **** out of anything that bothers them, so unless you see stress signs (urinating, squealing, etc) i would hesitantly assume "play"

 

[Oko]

Looks ok to me, Lecter seems fine with it. No freezing in terror, he seems pretty chill about the whole thing, just off exploring. Wes tries to play bow at my rats too, silly dogs.

 

[mrose_s]

Quirrel (the other rat) scared her off about a week ago, she was sniffing his nose and he opened his mouth at her... Oh the terror. Quinn didn't really approach them for days but she seems to have something going on for this boy.

 

[Shakou]

in my experience, rats will NOT hesitate to bite the holy **** out of anything that bothers them, so unless you see stress signs (urinating, squealing, etc) i would hesitantly assume "play"

It usually takes a LOT to get even a frightened rat to seriously bite something. Rats are usually very docile animals that will run away and hide from something before going into full blown attack mode.

In this case, he seems curious. A little nervous, but not frightened. That's about right.

 

[LeonilCraig]

Quinn looks afraid of Lecter While Lecter looks cool and friendly