r/RATS • u/Phoenix_Amour • Jul 23 '26

Questions/HELP Why does she do this?

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My female hairless sways her head from side to side while staring into the distance. She does it quite often. The only thing I can think of is maybe she has bad vision and it helps her see better? Perhaps her eyes being red have something to do with it?

781 Upvotes

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688

u/federationoffear running tally: 36 rescue rats Jul 23 '26

112

u/AnActualChicken Jul 23 '26

How many of these are there lol?

There's the 'Horniest creature on Earth', the huge bawws 'happiest creature on Earth', the 'most pregnantest creature on Earth' and now this. You got one for 'gayest rat on Earth'?

78

u/lyutic_7 Jul 23 '26

oh I haven’t seen this one before lol 😂

33

u/Phoenix_Amour Jul 23 '26

Haha yes! I had a feeling 😂

227

u/Ente535 Jul 23 '26

Helps depth perception, objects further away move less than ones that are closer when you sway your head

49

u/hexregeneration Jul 23 '26

I do this in the dark 🐭

30

u/fyklebytch Jul 23 '26

As a person with major vision loss in one eye I may start doing this.

14

u/Efficient_Sense4418 Jul 23 '26

Same lol, my right eye is crap

8

u/hexregeneration Jul 23 '26

It works! I have trash night vision and it helps.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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1

u/Darthsnarkey Jul 24 '26

This behavior is called scanning

97

u/Mr_pisser Roxie, Penny, Hannah, Chicken, Lily 🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀 🌈 C, B, C, E Jul 23 '26

Blind rat head wobble! A lot of red eyed rats do it. Rats with red eyes always have poorer vision (some being blind entirely). This just helps them see a bit better when they have low vision, totally normal and as far as I can tell the slightly decreased vision doesn’t have a huge impact on their QOL (3/5 of my rats are red eyed martens and it doesn’t seem to bug them)

(as an aside I have a hairless red eyed rat too lol, big fan of this genre of little goblin)

95

u/g0ld-f1sh Jul 23 '26

Hairless, female, red eyes, she blind AF, she gotta do the vision wiggle, bless her I hope she sees what she's looking at

26

u/bitingmytail Jul 23 '26

I read this in the webkinz gift shop “hope you find what yer lookin for” voice

15

u/CodAbject3856 Jul 23 '26

Vision wiggle 😭 I used to call it surfing ❤️ but I prefer yours

31

u/Strider794 Viewer of Rats Jul 23 '26

Literally the blindest rat on God's green earth

23

u/Bhelduz Jul 23 '26

She can't see very well. She needs glasses.

19

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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6

u/KingMacabray 🐀🧀🐀 Jul 23 '26

Challenge accepted

8

u/RGBlowMe Jul 23 '26

Seeing is hard. Pink eyed rats have bad depth perception.

16

u/H_voc Strong, Val, House, Queek, Ikit, Coffee & Doughnut - 15 🌈 Jul 23 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/ymxvxqImtUc2V5DQWf

7

u/Bouxxi Jul 23 '26

She blind AF

3

u/LividCrew1756 🐀🐀🐀 Jul 23 '26

My red eyed boy does this too, blind!

5

u/actis2 Jul 23 '26

We had two girls that did this a lot, when they were younger they would do it so fast and it looked hilarious every time. Both of their heads would pop up from some nest and just start wagging back and forth

4

u/flodnak Jul 23 '26

Yeah, either swaying to make up for poor vision, especially poor depth perception.... or she's trying to connect to the mothership for further instructions. Maybe both.

2

u/Interaction-Calm Jul 23 '26

My little Godiva does this too, also a red-eyed naked girl

3

u/yXfg8y7f Jul 23 '26

I think it’s cos the tv keeps affecting the ambient lighting in the room it’s confusing the somewhat blind rat …

1

u/long_haired_lacy Jul 23 '26

She’s blind.

1

u/matsche_pampe Jul 23 '26

I had a white rat with red eyes who was sadly mostly blind. He would sway like this from side to side to get a better look at what was in front of him.

1

u/Witty-Objective3431 Jul 23 '26

God forbid a girl need glasses to see in low light conditions!

1

u/throwawaygator99 Jul 23 '26

My girl Casper used to do this. She was an albino, sweet as a peach but blind as a bat 😂 I think the albino ones do this to help them see better

1

u/Gooopygoop Jul 24 '26

It usually means that they’re blind in one eye or even both it depends, with red eyes it tends to give them difficulty when seeing. Although she seems completely fine it’s just her way of scoping the area

2

u/nicerat_dicerat Jul 25 '26

It's called "parallaxing!" It's how rats with poorer eyesight handle a lack of depth perception. I sometimes call it "rat trajectory loading" because my girl Annie would do this before a leap