Rat Facts

Rats are highly intelligent mammals who are known for there adaptable and often destructive nature, lets learn some fundamental rat facts, preparing you for recognizing and dealing with rodents on your property. Owing to the adaptabillity, rats are found almost world wide with exception to places that are simply too cold for them to live such as Antarctica. Despite their chaotic behaviour around humans, rats fill a purpose in cleaning away waste from city streets, spreading seeds via ‘Scatter hoarding’ or being a food source for some larger animals. Below we discuss a few other little known facts about this infamous species.

Our top 4 Rat facts

#1 Rats are incredibly social animals…

Chances are if you do spot one, their friends will probably be close by!

Wild rats tend to live in LARGE communities also known as ‘packs’, a ‘nest’ or a ‘colony’. These can vary in size from simply a few rats to several hundred in a single community!

#2 Rat’s ‘Open rooted’ teeth will never stop growing!

If they stop gnawing and grinding their teeth down, the incisors will not wear normally.

No wonder they’re always finding things to chew through!

#3 Almost 80% of rats suffer with Neophobia which is an extreme fear of something new

According to scientists, rats will overcome the fear after 86 hours (between 3 and 4 days).

This is vastly different to mice, who are known to be quite nosy, also preferring to investigate changes immediately!

#4 Did you know rats can jump nearly 80cm high and 120cm horizontally …

Rats are incredibly good at climbing, if they see an incentive like an open waste bin, they’ll go for it!

Now you’ve learnt some basic rat facts, hopefully you can better identify whether you have an infestation, so are you ready to call SCPC?