is it normal?

Question
hi sandra,
i mailed you a few days ago, about my grumpy neutered boy fred(14months old), i decided that it was taking far too long to wait to rehome a older female to be his new cage mate, so i bought a baby girl(around6/7 weeks)who was the only one left, shes a bright cheeky little one and i now see the difference in behavior between girls and boys :)
ive placed her in a a smaller cage near by where he sleeps.
i dont think im going to have any problems with her as shes very gentle but im wondering about fred?
his albino and im sure he cant see to good, when he first smelt her about he looked very excited and ran about all over his cage trying to work out where she was, when i positioned her cage where she was going to be staying fred fluffed up and started putting his nose through his bars making a sort of snorting noise is this normal?????
one more thing today he bit me genitally again i didnt pull away this time and then he done it again but this time a slight bit harder,(painless but hard enough to mark) what do you think by my descriptions, is he being nasty or just testing how much he can get away with? i made sure i stroked him after just to let him know it didnt bother me lol and told him no and he changed his mind on the third attempt!!! :)
so is it normal how his acting? and what do you think of his bitting games?
thanks ever soo much
sarah

Answer
You cant put her with Fred. She is too young and he may hurt her or possibly kill her.  Maybe when she is about 4 months old, but she is too young.  Male rats, intact or not, have been known to kill young ratlets.

Also, the aggression he showed her tells me he wanted her big time.

Did he teeter back and forth and walk sideways too?  Did he urinate when he saw her?  The snorting is like a cats hiss....this is the way a rat hisses. They "huff" and snuffle.   My boys teeter back and forth and also walk sideways and urinate etc...when they are being territorial etc....

I would be really leary at this point, but you can still allow them side by side so he can take a long time to get used to her smell etc...