Forum Overview :: Biohazard: Code Veronica :: Senor Barborito MetaFilter Post

[quote name="Senor Barborito MetaFilter Post"]lodurr that brings to mind another good point - rats themselves are very prone to dying painfully from tumors anytime after they turn 2 years old. Of the 10 or so rats my wife and I have owned, almost all of them spent their last months growing multiple tumors (we'd get them surgery for the first 2-3, but after that it just became prohibitively expensive) until it killed them usually via respiratory failure - I think only one of the ten saw their third birthday. You know how you read 'X causes cancer in laboratory rats?' Breathing causes tumors of all kinds in rats, both benign and malignant. Rats compensate for this fact by having an average of 5 litters of 7 to 11 pups both years. Gerbils, on the other hand, tend to exist in a sort of binary state - either they're alive and very healthy or they're dead with little prelude. They usually last 4-5 years, in my experience. Over the course of their entire lifespans, however, gerbils have 4-6 litters of 4-6 pups. It would be nice if, once again, we could have the best of both worlds here, and limit birthrate down to, say, two-three for each of the 4-6 litters. posted by Ryvar at 11:11 AM PST on December 20 [/quote]