About Rats: Appearance, biology, life cycle, habitat, diet and behavior

Rats are animal in the rodent family known for their long tail and larger body size when compared to mouse. They are from the Genus Rattus with great ability to cause huge damages to property at home, offices, garden and others. Also, rats normally feed from things in the trash making them capable of transmitting dangerous disease to man.

Appearance
Rats are larger in body size than mouse and they have long tail as well as large ears with bugle eyes coupled with several colors of fur. They have different sizes of physical body base on their species but they are always bigger in comparison to the mouse. Rats also have teeth that continuously grow for the lifetime and to put the growing teeth in control, they usually find themselves chewing on things round. That is a characteristic shared by almost all animals in the rodent family.

Biology and life cycle
Several outbreaks of human diseases have been pointed out to be caused by rats. This is mostly due to the fact that their body normally carries bacterial around. Also rat blood normally house several kinds of bacteria as well as viruses. Reproduction of rat is always rapid as the female usually born several baby rats at the same time. Different rat species normally have different life span. While some of the species normally live as low as twelve months, there are species that normally last up to eight years. Rats also have lots of predators that usually feed on their meat and they usually experience fatal death.

Habitat
Rats have special body structure that made them live in virtually any kind of place. Some of them are found in the wild but, with higher population in houses build by human as well as trash cans and others. They are also found living in swage tank, waste dispose and lots more. Higher percentage of them normally makes their own burrow underground mostly during their reproduction season.

Behavior
After sexual relation, male rats usually go on their way living the female rat to cater for the pregnancy and nurse the baby. The babies are usually born helpless and blind and they mother always do everything to ensure adequate protection from possible predators around. More so, Rats are known for their special social life and that is among the things that made them unique among other animals in the rodent family.

Diet
So long as rat is hungry, it can practically feed on anything around it. They can feed on berries, nut, vegetables, fruits, mice and event insect mostly while in the wild. But, while in human house, they usually feed on leftover foods, bread, fish and other things round around even in the trash and waste bin. The ability of rat to feed on anything is among the reason why they are highly destructive in nature than most other animals. They can even eat up the food you keep for your dog and even eat the meat you kept carelessly in the kitchen and other part of your home.

Go back to the Noises in the Attic home page.