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I've kept rats my whole life and on one hand I'm not surprised, they'll eat what seems like literally anything, on the other hand they seriously pick their battles, a rat isn't going to engage with anything it's unaware of, they have extreme neophobia so I'm somewhat surprised this rat felt the situation out enough that it was comfortable doing this, I'd guess it had spent a lot of time around the bats, also surprising because the rat is a bit on the chonky side to be opportunistically hunting that way. Interesting.


How do you think he got so chonky?


My rats were very picky eaters. The inside of a cucumber slice would be eaten leaving the skin behind for example.


Unlike bats, cucumber slices can be easily transported to a safe eating place, rarely fight back, and are ideally suitable for precision nibbling.


The skin of cucurbits is usually fairly high in cucurbitacins (usually much higher than the flesh).


that's not unusual; most rodents do it, and also ants and plecostomuses (although in their cases it may be less out of preference and more due to mouth limitations)


true! But that's also because cucurbitacins, given the size of a rat I'd imagine it wouldn't have to eat much cucumber skin to get pretty sick.




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