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Given the huge ecological impact that domestic cats can have on their surroundings, why don’t we domesticate more rats as our family pets, rather than vilifying them?

Barbara Sommerville
Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK

I have worked a lot with laboratory rats, and they could make excellent pets, but they would need serious genetic modifications to be made to them. Particularly, they would need their lifespan to be extended considerably because they only live for about two years.

My lab rats were exceedingly intelligent, hard working and affectionate with gentle people. If one started with wild rats, they may need to be…