What can you get from rats?

Answer 1

If you bought a healthy rat and keep it indoors as a pet, you can't get anything from it. It's the same as owning a cat or a dog. I was bitten by my pet rats a few times, came into contact with rat feces and urine, and breathed dust with particles in it, and I have suffered zero illness.

Certain species of wild rats and other rodents (muskrats, mice, etc) may transmit different diseases. Please note that these diseases are generally transmitted through breathing in/consuming anything with rat feces or urine in it, or coming into contact with (including being bitten or scratched by) infected animals (including carcasses or fleas and ticks that have been infected). Again, these are wild rodents, not the rodents you see in pet stores or buy from breeders. You cannot spontaneously develop these diseases from animals that are not carrying the bacteria or viruses, as well.

As with all wild animals, just don't touch them or go near them, and you should be fine.

Diseases listed are pertinent to rats, and rats or other rodents. No mouse-specific or other rodent-specific diseases are listed.

Different diseases are: Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (virus, most of North and South America), Rat-Bite fever (bacteria, worldwide), Leptospirosis (bacteria, worldwide), Lassa Fever (virus, West Africa -- the only one that can be spread through direct human contact), Plague (bacteria, Western US, South America, Africa, Asia), Salmonellosis (bacteria, worldwide), Tularemia (bacteria, worldwide), South America Arenaviruses (virus, South America), and Hemorraghic Fever with Renal Syndrome (virus, primarily in eastern Asia, Russia, Korea, Scandinavia, Western Europe, and the Balkans).