On April 4 of each year, a rather unconventional holiday is celebrated – World Ornamental Rat Day. The event was invented in the United States in 2003. The date of the celebration was chosen in accordance with the day the oldest resource on the Internet dedicated to rats was launched.
The decorative rat is a full-fledged member of many families, an animal characterized by good mental abilities, activity, friendliness and agility. Rats have a strong aptitude for survival, the ability to dream, compassion, and love. In addition, the animal lends itself well to training.
World Rat Day aims to draw public attention to the decorative animal and unite rat breeders from all over the world.

It may seem strange to some that so much attention is paid to the rat, but it is worth recalling that, for example, the Chinese calendar devotes a whole year to it (the Year of the Rat). And it is not for nothing that it is considered a very intelligent and agile animal with a cheerful disposition and amazing vitality. Fans of ornamental rats consider them not only gentle, sociable, curious and friendly animals, but also literally members of their family, inevitably attractive… By the way, scientists often compare rats to humans because our genomes are 95% similar (!). And they live the same way as we do: they fight to the last when it comes to survival or preservation of offspring, learn from their own mistakes, even fall in love and dream like humans. Recently, scientists have proved that in addition to squeaking, rats communicate with each other using ultrasonic signals inaudible to the human ear, which, as it turned out, number in the tens of thousands, indicating a rich vocabulary of these animals. And rats are also able to sympathize… But it is worth recalling that today we are talking about decorative, domestic rats, which differ from wild rats only in that they are bred in captivity for an ennomous generation (by the way, England is considered the “homeland” of these pets). This means that such a rat is as smart as a wild rat and as affectionate as a pet, but to a certain extent, of course. It’s no secret that many animals have been used by doctors as laboratory animals for many centuries, and the talents of laboratory rats have not gone unnoticed. For example, for the first time in the world, rats entered the circus arena thanks to the Durov brothers: they were the ones who began to demonstrate trained albino rats. Later, these animals were sold at bird markets and pet stores, and today there are rat lovers’ clubs and rat nurseries all over the world.