Yeah, that's one of the things I love about rats, they are smart, they tame easily when very young, and once they are tame, they STAY tame.
If your rats are biting you, I would guess you bought them from a pet store and they were seperated from their mom too early and had no human contact until their eyes opened.
Seriously, if you want tame rats the easy way is to pick up a handfull of babies when the mom is distracted, and let the babies smell you for a few minutes.
If you do this a few times before their eyes open, you can pick them up when they're small but their eyes are open, and they will know you by smell, by sight, and know you won't hurt them, because they associate you with a communal mom, and you are their surrogate mom or dad.
If you try it with hamsters it wil make no diffeence, they have a short memory, but rats remember stuff like that, and will be tame with once a week cage cleaning type handling.

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