Rat Staring Contest With Background Music
This video was shown on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (14th April 2009), Rude Tube (13th October 2010), Animal Planet's Untamed and Uncut, MTV3 and was the number one video on G4's Attack of The Show. And probably some others that I've forgotten!
The cage in the video is a hamster cage and is much, much too small for even a single rat. They don't live in it and was used only for introducing these two pairs in a confined space. They live in a huuuge cage with many hammocks, ropes and soft beds, so no worries guys ;)
Rats perform this bizarre behaviour when they feel their dominance is being threatened, but nowhere else have I ever heard of rats standing up like this for over five minutes straight at a time! Normally it should be for just a couple of seconds. I believe these two brothers learned that by looking busy with each other like this, the older rats wouldn't challenge them.