Rat types and variety records

Rat types

There are no real rat breeds but we can find many varieties. Rats are usually described according to five main characteristics: base color, dilution, marking, coat type and ear type.

• The color (black, agouti, blue, etc.) and the dilution (also known as shading, if the rat is siamese for exemple) combine to determine the hair color on the body parts where the hair is not white. The color comes from pigments present or not in the hair whereas the dilution is a modification of the expression of those pigments as if the color was “faded”.
• The marking describes the white and colored hair distribution just as if a “stencil” would have been put on the body to hide the color on some parts.
• The coat type corresponds to the hair texture when touching it : smooth, curly (“rex” rats) or even naked (hairless).
• The ear type corresponds to the form, implantation and orientation of the ears. We only know two ear types: “standard” and “dumbo”.

To those five characteristics are added the eyes color (based on the previous criteria) and possible singularities such as dwarfism (“dwarf” rats) or tail-less rats (“manx” rats).

In the LORD register all these parameters are saved separately which means that some appellations do not exist such as the “ivory” type (refering to black-eyed albino rats) or the “wheaten burmese” type which designates a burmese agouti rat.

You can read this detailed notice for more explanations and exemples: Identify a rat type.

Variety records

Following the example of rats and ratteries, each rat type has its own record whether it’s a color, a dilution, a marking… These forms collect two types of information:

• Descriptive information such as the genotype, the standard if existing, the other denominations used abroad as well as pictures of rats carrying those characteristics;
• Statistics automatically calculated from rats records including the frequency of this particularity within all the registered rats and the average longevity of those rats.

The action bar enables you to access more resources.

Icon	Action
	Accessing the list of all varieties of the same category (every colors, every markings, etc.)
	Finding all the rats of this variety and browse its sortable list
	Open a new tab to the matching Lab-o-rats form (when a match is found)

Any variety record can be accessed from the record of a rat of this variety or from each category list : colors, dilutions, markings, ear types, coat types, eyes colors, singularities.

The writing of the description of each variety is still ongoing in coordination with the SRFA association. Thank you for your patience during the process.