A friend of mine kept them as pets. I was there once and watched one eat a piece of spaghetti. It held the noodle with both paws, sitting on its hind legs, and took bites while feeding it into its mouth "hand over hand". I have never really forgotten that. There was something so deliberate and skilled about this. No dumb beast, this, face down in a pile of food. This was an intelligent, fastidious creature enjoying a pasta dinner.

That’s actually a behavioral task used in neuroscience experiments as well. Pasta eating is a surprisingly complex skill involving dexterous manipulation and complexity sensory and motor signaling throughout the brain.

We used to keep rats, and they are pretty delightful really. I discovered later that they are such sociable creatures, they really need friends of their own kind. Ours got lots of attention, could pretty much run free for most of the day, but they do get lonely.

Give them a dish of water and you might see them wash their hands after eating too! They’re very human sometimes.

Thanks for that image

Hamsters, on the other hand...

https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...

A super-cute rat eating spaghetti more or less this way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp8VapqaCkE

Rats are pretty clever, they can respond to their names and follow simple verbal instructions.

Back when I was a student I used to keep a couple, and several local friends also had one or two. They make good pets - larger and less fragile than mice, smarter and more interactive than gerbils, and not at all prone to biting you randomly.

I've seen squirrels bait cats and other animals in a playful fashion, facing downwards on a tree doing the undulating tail thing. Maybe rats are smarter, but squirrels are pretty playful and charismatic.

I used to keep a rat, and considered her about as smart and enterprising as my cats.

I regularly feed squirrels coming to my window. Some of them are curious and brave enough to enter the room through the window, and they definitely learned what actions of mine lead to food appearing at the windowsill.

Animals are fun.