My New Little Boy REALLY Bit Me!

Question
Hi!
Im a newby to having rats. I got 2 young males about 1 week ago. Im guessing by the sizes that one is older than the other. I was told they were "a couple months old", however one is much larger, and this is the one that got my poor finger!
I've been picking them up and taking them out of the cage to crawl on me to get used to me for 15 or 20 minutes a day, and two or three times a day, I just open the cage and lay my hand in there for them to sniff, and pet them if they let me.
The larger one would poop every time I took him out, so I know he's more nervous than the other one. So, I decided to take it a little slower and not take him out of the cage. Instead just put my hand in the cage and pet him, and let him come to me on his own. Last night he was being his normal frisky self, running around, flipping and being silly, so I put my hand in the cage and he would come up and sniff, then run away, then run back up to my hand and sniff again, then run away....like he wanted me to play with him, then I went to pet him and he bit the blood out of my finger, I mean this wasnt a nip, it was a serious BITE! My finger wouldnt stop bleeding! Why did he do that? I thought he was being playful, was I wrong? He never "puffed" up or showed anything to make me think he was being aggressive....until he bit me!... he was just doing the normal silly playful stuff he does every night.
Also, how long should it take for my rats to bond to me and trust me and stop being so nervous?
Thanks!  

Answer
Hi and welcome to the world of rats!!

Unfortunately its hard to say why the little guy bit you, but from what it sounds like, he is not aggressive, just a big skittish.  
Rats are basically legally blind as well...was there a chance he smelled food on your hand? He may have also been giving you a warning to back off by coming to your hand and backing off again several times because he is yet uncomfortable with your hand in his only safe domaine.
Rat bites hurt like heck, unfortunately I know this all too well myself. They bite with over 10 lbs of pressure and have a harder bite than a dog. I was going to compare the rats jaw strength to that of a pit bull but I dont want to discriminate against the regal dog breed with all the bad rap they get, but it is true the breed of dog has an incredible jaw strength, and a rats jaw strength surpasses that of a pit bull.  
Rats can pick up on your fears and any negative energy so dont let him know you may have reservations about him now or he may continue to fear you.  Soak your hand in epsom salts and put some neosporin on it. Some people will even go to the doctor for a tetnus shot if your not up to date which is a wise idea with ANY animal bite, but I never have and never had an infection so I thought I would pass that along too.

So what to do about this? It probably wont happen again but if you do notice the males are getting aggressive and start to hurt each other and bite you, they can easily be neutered and this resolves everything.
Did you get the rats at a pet store? If so, its impossible to know their bloodline but the unfortunate truth is, these rats are not bred for health nor temperment and have untraceable health history. This means, of course, that you may have to socialize them and have lots of patience and understanding. Normally, a rat breeder (a small rattery, not one that pumps out several dozen at a time and supplies pet stores with them) will socialize the rats the day they are born and by the time they open their eyes at 2 weeks old, they are very tame and very used to being picked up and handled. When this is NOT done, the rats are only used to seeing humans peer in at them and have little interaction physically and they reject it and fear it at first as this is unnatural for rats to be friends with humans. After all, humans have been trying to eradict their species from the face of the earth for centuries. Why should they trust US?

What you need to do is trust train them....do NOT take them out or pick them up, but instead, you need to allow them out of the cage and they need a safe secure play area of their own to come out everyday. You of course will be involved in this play time and supervise them the entire time but allow them to come to YOU, rather than you going to them.

Check out my website. I have devoted an entire page to trust training rats. I trained a wild baby rat who to this day I still have nerve damage from all of her bites to my fingers and thumb, and after a week of working with her, she became the best rat I have ever had in my life. She left me in July of 2007 after living just 2 months shy of her 4th birthday but she has left an empty hole in my heart that no other animal can ever fill. My little girl Holly. So I wanted to let people know that if I trained her (Her nickname was CHOMPS for a short time) anyone can train a domestic rat.

Here is the link to my site.  Please read it and if you have anything you want to ask, feel free to write for a follow up. So far, the readers on here have followed my advice and have written back a week or so later saying how much their rats have changed and now they are coming out for play time and not running scared and hiding any more.
It takes time and patience and how long it takes depends on how much you work with them.

Good luck!

Here are the links:

http://www.freewebs.com/crittercity/helpbitingscaredrats.htm

http://www.freewebs.com/crittercity/gettingstarted.htm