Marc Morrone: The side of rodents scouring across the floor makes many people scream but rodents what I call the pocket pets make great pets. Hi, I am Marc Morrone and welcome to the Pet Shop. The reason why rodents like this little rat Rufus here scurry is because most of the time something is trying to eat them, so when you are a little animal and the whole world is trying to eat you, it live longer discovery about. However once a rodent doesn't have to be afraid of eating, I am not going to eat this rat and either as, they can stop and sniff this snows the -- and realize life is a pretty good thing and that's when their true personality comes out. Same thing happens with people, when we are trying to survive or when we are doing our best they can sleep, don't get relaxed, once our basic needs are met then we can relax and our true personalities come out. The same thing applies with rodents, and that's why rodents make such a nice pet.

And rodents really have many, many endearing characteristics, I mean who doesn't like Mickey Mouse, Charlotte's Web, the Rat Templeton, what a character he was, so rats and mice and hamsters and gerbils really have a lot of endearing characteristics and most importantly as far as pets go they make great pets for kids. These animals are used to living in small areas, they don't need to have the kind of attention that some larger animals would need but yet dissention, they know themselves as an individual, Rufus knows that he is Rufus and he knows me by my smell and probably by my voice, even by sight, he doesn't get a chance to see my face very often because it is so small but the fact that an animal can recognize a child as an individual makes that child want to take care of it.

If the pet has a name and the pet recognize that the person, the child and that child is going to take an interest in the pet and hopefully go out of it's way to be sure that the pet has everything that it needs and when children learn responsibility and worry about an animal, they hopefully again could turn out to be better adults and worry about other people and little bit responsible of doing this for they have done in their life.

So, hopefully, if your child takes care of this little rat this going to be a better adult and that's why I think all pocket pets make such good pets for people. I tend to call them pocket pets because when I was a kid I had a lot of rodent pets and I have one rat in particular who used to come to the school everyday and he will ride to school in my pocket and nobody would know that he was there, he got so used to it but I open this cage it voluntarily crawl out, climb on my shoulder across my shirt pocket and stay there all day in my pocket. So until this day I call them all pocket pets although keeping them in your pockets not the right thing to do and certainly taking them to school is not the right thing to do.

Female Speaker: Can take rabbis from a rodent bite?

Marc Morrone: Can you get rabbis from a rodent bite, well the only way an animal can give you rabbis if that animal contracted rabbis and the only way animal can contract rabbis if it gets bitten by another animal with rabbis. So I doubt that Rufus is here, it's going to be walking the streets at night putting himself and jeopardy by being bitten by another rabbit animal. So I really don't thing that's an issue or something you have to worry about as a pocket pet owner.

Now the sensibilities of some women are shocked to think that they might have a rat living in their house, but you have to realize that not all rats are created equal, now what's true that the rats we see scouring around New York city at night do a lot of damage, they dint choose to be there though we put them there, we introduce no way rats all over the world and this fellow here this pet rat is a domesticated form of a Norway rat, and is different from that animal, this is the important point this rats has difference from that Norway rat as my pug dog Piper is from the world that, she was domesticated from. These rats are naturally trained, they were selectively bread from many, many, many generations and rodents are short-lived animals, they only live three years or so.

So as far as generations go rats are probably been a domesticated for as many generations as dogs have been and hamsters too and gerbils and all the small animals that we view where I call as pocket pets. We think of having a rodent living in your house it's not the same rodent that might be living outside, these are domesticated animals that have been domesticated just to be Childs pets.

Apart from the fact that they are easy to take care of they can live in most any where, any place you can keep a larger animal like a dog or a cat or even a rabbit or a parrot, you can keep a hamster or gerbil or a rat, they need small little cages, they don't make any noise, no one is going to know you have them, the landlord wont say thing so if your child really wants to have a pretty pet a mammal not a with rabbit, not a gold fish but something that's warm-blooded something that a child can relate to, then you can't go wrong in keeping a rat or any other kind of a pocket pet.

I am Marc Morrone and to learn more about your pet checkout the Pet Shop and remember always try to look at the world from your pets point of view.