Expert: Sandra Todd - 6/22/2008

Question
QUESTION: How far can respiratory travel from one rat to another? For example if one rat is on one side of the room and another rat is kept on the other side, would the healthy one be able to contract it within a certain distance or will it no matter what if it is in the same room?

ANSWER:
If the bacteria or virus that is causing the respiratory infection is airborne, that means it can simply travel on dust particles or on micro tiny droplets that become aerosolized just from sneezing, coughing or simply exhaling and can travel a great distance, even across the room.

However, if the rat even spent a few seconds  with other rats while sick, they were all exposed already and there is no need to further stress the rat out by making he or she be alone. Stress will simply cause the rats immune system to weaken which can cause the rat to have a harder time fighting the illness. If the other rat that was possibly exposed is stressed from having his cagemate removed, he will also be more apt to develop illness from a weak immune system.  Unless the rat came to the house already sick and never was in the same room with the other rats, I would not worry about separating them.

I am not sure what the story is but this is just "in case" this is why you were asking.



Hope this helps

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: How would I know if it is airborne or not?

I have a cage of healthy rats and I just rescued a rat with respiratory, I need to know how far away he must be separated from the rest so he does not get them sick, we live in a large two story house, but down stairs is not a good place to keep the rats since the Huskies live down there.

So approximately how many feet must they stay apart to be safe at minimum?

Answer
If its respiratory, its airborne.

I would keep them as far apart as possible, in another room if possible. The same room would mean sharing the same air which would more than likely be contaminated with infected aerosol droplets as I said before. The germs travel on dust particles. I would keep the sick rat in a different room. A sneeze can travel anywhere from 100 and up (true!!) and germs can travel 50 feet plus.

The real truth?? To be totally safe the animal should be in a totally different airspace since these germs can get into the ventilation system which is when we suggest quarantine we always suggest a different airspace.

However, after 48 hours on antibiotics and if he is showing signs of improving, he should not be contagious any longer.