>>345868In fact, the more we study rats the more we realize how perceptive, smart, emotional, and human-like they are. Seventy-five mya (just a couple of weeks in the evolutionary time scale), rats and you were the same animal; they share a closer evolutionary relationship to humans than even what we consider "pretty animals" such as felines and canines. Their nutritional requirements are also very similar to our own, which is why your pet rat can survive well on people food while your cat needs a formulated diet enriched with things like taurine. Rats have been discovered to possess metacognition (the ability to judge their own metal abilities), and to be capable of identifying causal relationships, suggesting they're one of the most intelligent animals on earth. Although rats do not display emotions on their face and are programmed to hide signs of distress to protect them from predation, their emotional center of the brain (the limbic system) is identical to human's, and evidence suggests that they are emotional beings (Dr. Jaak Panksepp uses rats to study laughter).
As a social animal, the rat possess many character traits which are best described as altruistic and loving. This is a big topic and I won’t go into it since any rat owner knows how affectionate they are.
tl;dr: Rats rule and you are just making yourself look ignorant.