What are the offspring of rats and mice called?
I have only heard them called pups or kittens, but a feeder baby is called a pinkie.
Can a rat and hamster mix together and make babies?
The issue is not whether they will mate or not (animals get frisky with animals outside their species all the time). Ask anyone who has a male dog or cat that they have seen try and hump various living ... and nonliving things when they are in heat. The issue is whether or not they have compatible chromosomes. Tigers and Lions are different species but are closely related enough to have compatible chromosomes and thus you get (depending on the mating) Tions and Ligers. Horses and Donkeys are also closely related and when they mate they produce a mule, a sterile hybrid offspring. These kinds of cross species pairings are relatively rare because most species are not compatible enough with other species. For a pairing to work they have to be closely related (like Lions and tigers) and have compatible Chromosomes, and have genes that are compatible enough for the offspring to live to adulthood. Even often animals that are closely related cannot interbreed. For example of the 5 different domestic species of hamster, only 2 of them are capable of interbreeding, and it comes at a cost. When a Campbells Dwarf and a Winter White are crossbred, the offspring have reduced fertility, a high prevalence of diabetes, and a variety of other health problems that are created. So the short answer is, no Rats, Guinea pigs, and Hamsters could not be crossbred as they don't have the same number of Chromosomes. Additionally it would be disastrous if they were, especially for the unfortunate female hamster who would die trying to bring a baby hybrid to term that is much to large for her to deliver.
How to care for baby mice with no mother?
With orphaned pet rodents, you'd usually try to find a local breeder who has a nursing mother, but since these are wild, I doubt any breeder would be willing to take them in and potentially introduce disease or parasites to their own animals. Your best bet is to find a pet store that sells live "pinky" or "hopper" mice/rats as food for reptiles. Those stores usually breed their own mice/rats. See if they are willing to sell one of their mother mice/rats, ideally one which has a litter close in age to the mice you found. Buy the mother mouse/rat and a couple of her babies-- not her whole litter, since she will be nursing all of the wild babies as well. Introduce the wild babies to the foster mother, and hope for the best. You may want to try a rat mother instead of a mouse mother; rats are supposed to be more accepting of offspring that are not their own. This is the technique I use for fostering orphaned gerbil pups-- I'm not sure if it would make the introduction easier with mice/rats or if it's not needed: - First, put the foster mother in a container by herself for a moment. - Hold the foster mother, and carefully rub the orphaned babies on her belly (gerbils have a scent gland here-- I'm not sure about mice/rats). - Place the orphaned babies in with the foster mother's babies, and let them greet each other. After a few minutes, they should curl up in a big pile together. - Then put the foster mother in with all the babies. She should accept the orphans as her own. If you are unable to find a foster mother, it's also possible to hand-rear the babies. However, it's a lot of work, and isn't always successful. Here is a good article on raising orphaned mice and rats: http://www.afrma.org/rminfo8.htm
Breeding son to mother? inbreeding?
Breeding ANY related dogs is inbreeding, though we 'pretty' it up with more distant relatives by calling it line breeding. The closer the relation, the higher the risks. I'm not going to say that even such a tight breeding can't produce good results, but never in the hands of anyone other than a breeder with a great grasp of genetics and the knowledge of all defects carried in their lines @Sunsfan - you don't strengthen phenotype by breeding ANYTHING other than perfect dogs to begin with. You don't 'set' type in poor examples of their breed (too long, short, tall or anything else) by line breeding because you're just as likely to set improper type as your are proper. Good breeders will crossfault when outcrossing dogs, but when line breeding, they use the best of the best which means genotype AND phenotype are already as close to ideal as they come, which is the purpose in line breeding in the first place, to ensure that the progeny and the lines will retain both types ETA: And I repeat, when line breeding, you're setting in type. You don't do that with less than perfect dogs, since it then takes many generation to breed out the faults you just set in. I don't know what all these percentages of 'blood' have to do with anything, but any breeder who goes about line breeding the way you suggest is doing no service to the breed. We don't line breed a dog with HD to one without, knowing the uneffected closely related dog will be carrying for it and assume that breeding the uneffected one in will now create uneffected offspring Yes, your examples were extreme to be considered worthy at all, but the major problem with your assertion is that every time you line breed to correct a perceived 'fault' you're raising the inbreeding coefficient, and increasing the chance of problems. That's why you outcross to strong lines with similar type to correct those faults and then breed back to your own lines
Is hyrbridising animals cruel/ unethical/ against natural law?
The style of your question mean it shouldn't necessarily fit into the law/ethics category. To get a true answer, you would have to be more specific on what animals. Now, commonly horses and donkeys are bred to produce mules. This typically doesn't result in any abnormal complications from either animal, especially during birthing. Ligers, which are of course a mix of a lion and a tiger, happen in captivity sometimes, and would not happen in the wild, due to hybrid vigor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis ) they tend to be larger than both of the parents, giving great complications during birthing, which can result in the death of the mother, as well as many health problems for the liger, such as joint problems due to their large size. This could consider immoral, cruel, or unethical, as it would not occur in nature and puts animals lives and health at risk. As far as evolution goes, there is no laws that claim these interactions cannot take place, evolution merely describes how changes have occurred, and can help us predict what changes might take place under certain circumstances. Even concerning dogs, which are all one species, breeding certain breeds could be immoral, if they were different in size, again, for health concerns for the animals, sometimes which they would be incapable of without human intervention. Though, some breeds do have trouble breeding without human assistance as well. A further note, some breeds do have health problems due to inbreeding throughout the breed, like brains too small for the skull. To really answer your question thought, it depends on what the result of the mixing of two species would result in. There aren't many animals of different species that can breed together even, most would be incapable of producing offspring with another species, especially one that is not very closely related.
Can you breed a hamster and a mouse?
No you cant.