Gray rat: description, photo, habitat, reproduction

Nature has given life to hundreds of amazing creatures. Some amaze with their beauty, others with their strength, and others with their size. The gray rat tries not to stand out and be seen as little as possible. Perhaps this is why few people know about the unique mental abilities of this animal, not to mention its gift of clairvoyance. The ability of rats to adapt to living conditions in which no other mammals can exist is also impressive.

The gray rat has not received either strength or large size from nature, but, being small and inconspicuous, it is capable of destroying millions of people, leaving them without food or infecting them with deadly infections. Humanity has been fighting rats for centuries, but has not yet come half a step closer to victory. In some amazing way, tailed rodents masterfully avoid all traps, survive all adversity and continue to thrive. We invite you to get acquainted with their amazing life, very short, but bright and extraordinary, in many ways similar to the lives of people.

History of origin and settlement

Paleontologists have found that the gray rat species appeared in the Pleistocene, that is, approximately 2.5 million years ago. Other rodents, including mice, already existed by that time. The next ice age that began killed many of them, but gave the gray rat the opportunity to establish itself as the most progressive species. In those distant times, these animals lived only in the territory of modern China.

From the south and east their habitat was limited by seas and oceans, from the west by insurmountable mountains, and from the north by a glacier. When it began to melt, the rats moved to new lands. Colonization proceeded unusually slowly. For more than 13 thousand years, they only reached the present-day Transbaikalia, where to this day they live well in natural conditions. Rats were encouraged to spread across the planet by people who began to actively engage in trade and navigation. About 2,000 years ago, tailed stowaways entered India on ships, from there they got to Persia, and then moved to Europe, America, Africa, and Australia. Now they are not found only in places where they have absolutely nothing to eat - in Antarctica, in the Arctic and in certain areas of the desert.

Mechanical methods

The so-called “mechanical methods” include the installation of traps and traps. The most common are large spring rat traps and small mouse traps. They must be installed close to entrance doors, holes and along walls.

An ordinary spring mousetrap.

To increase the effectiveness of the trap, you should put a piece of food in it. As bait, you can use a piece of lard, sausage, cheese or bread dipped in vegetable oil. Before placing traps, you need to wash the traps, as the human smell repels the animals. It is also recommended to lubricate them with something attractive to rodents. For example, glycerin, syrup, vanillin or vodka. Try not to touch the trap and bait without rubber gloves.

When a rodent runs into the cage, the door slams.

For smart animals that deftly avoid set traps and do not eat poisoned food, try preparing the following “cunning” bait. Combine wheat flour and dry building plaster in a ratio of 1 to 1. Pour the bait onto a plate at the rate of 1-2 tbsp. for one rat. Place a container of water nearby. Having eaten the bait, which tastes and smells no different from ordinary flour, the animal will soon die. The mixture will harden in her stomach in 5-10 minutes.

Traps should be changed every 5-10 days and checked regularly. If the mice do not show interest in the baits or have learned to get them out of the trap, this method is useless.

Etymology of the name

In the scientific world, the name of the gray rat sounds like Rattus norvegicus. It appeared after a biologist from England, John Berkenhout, saw these animals in the port and wrote a description of them. He was sure that ships arrived in England only from Norway, so with a clear conscience he dubbed the species he “discovered” the Norwegian rat, although these rodents did not exist in that country at all at that time. And they arrived in Foggy Albion, most likely, from Denmark and could well have become Danish rats if Sir Berkenhout had a little better understanding of navigation. Pasyuk, or Patsyuk, is another of their names, familiar to many Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. So, what are the heroes of our article?

Ways to control rodents

Let's look at the most effective ways to protect your home and property.

Toxic substances

There are many types of poisons in specialized stores.

All poisons can be divided into strong and weak effects.

• The first category includes zinc phosphide. The poison acts quickly . Once in the stomach, it begins to react with hydrochloric acid and forms hydrogen phosphide, which stops breathing. A 3% concentration of poison is suitable for the death of an animal. It is good because it will not cause poisoning in other animals if they eat a poisoned rat.
• Long-acting substances are more suitable for controlling small rodents. It may take quite some time until the poison accumulates in the body and destroys the animal. In addition, the gray rat’s body is more resistant to poison and can get used to it, so from time to time the type of substance will have to be changed.

What types of poison can be used?

• Treats soaked in poison (grain, cheese, bread, pieces of meat). The method is effective and most common.
• Liquid baits are chemicals dissolved in water and milk.
• Powdered chemicals - for pollinating burrow exits and other places where barn rats might be seen.
• Gaseous chemicals - used, for example, to irrigate burrows. This method should be used with caution, especially in residential areas.

Mechanical traps

Advice! Do not fully charge the mousetrap at first. Let the rodents eat the left baits several times. Rats will get used to taking the left treat and will not suspect that a click will soon occur and the trap will work.

Placing a mousetrap is the easiest way, but not reliable. The barn rat is larger than the vole, so a standard simple mousetrap will not work for it.

In addition, after catching 1-2 rodents, they do not want to go into the mousetrap even with the most exquisite bait.

Ultrasonic repellers

Quite an effective way . Modern devices are effective. Ultrasonic waves negatively affect the psyche of rodents and force them to leave populated areas.

Attention! For good results, the device must work constantly. In addition, when purchasing, it is important to compare the size of the area where the device will be used and the duration of the emitted wave. A universal, standard repeller is suitable for a barn, barn, or home. If you are going to install it on a large area, take care of purchasing several devices.

Path closure

Another not bad way to fight. You can get rid of gray rats in your house or barn by blocking the paths.

Try to figure out the passages, loopholes, paths along which the pasyuk makes its way into the house, and sprinkle calcium chloride . Rodents cannot tolerate this powder.

Rat holes and passages can be covered with cement and crushed glass . It will be extremely difficult for them to gnaw through such a wall.

All methods are good in the fight against the hated gray rodents.

In order for the work to be done effectively, it is better not to settle on any particular method, but try to change them or use them in combination.

Then your home and area will not be afraid of even such unpleasant pests as gray rats.

Gray rat: description

These animals have an unattractive appearance. The body of adult males can grow up to 25 and sometimes up to 30 cm in length, plus a bald, thin tail about 20 cm long. The body and tail of females are slightly shorter. The muzzle of gray rats of any sex is not elongated, like their black relatives, but more rounded, the ears are small, the eyes are small, similar to black beads.

The coat color, as the name suggests, is gray, the belly and sometimes the chest can be white. There are guard hairs along the body of rats. They are longer and thicker. In individuals living close to people, the coat color has a reddish or brownish tint, which is why many consider them not gray, but brown. Rodents bred in captivity are distinguished by an incredible variety of colors. Here you can find any combination of white, black, red and brown, although the species is still called the gray rat.

Their teeth do not fall out, but grow throughout their lives, so the animals must constantly gnaw on something to wear them down.

Appearance of a rodent

The general appearance of the animal is known to everyone: the gray rat is a medium-sized rodent, and of all the rats in Russia it is the largest. The only larger ones are gophers, marmots, beavers, nutria and other rodents that are not rats.

The length of the animal reaches approximately 19-24 cm, the length of the tail is 12-19 cm. It is noteworthy that the tail of the gray rat is never longer than the body, which is one of its differences from the black rat.

Photo of a large gray rat:

The color of the pasyuk's coat is usually not completely gray, but brownish, although young rat pups are precisely gray, and as they grow older, they develop a reddish coloration. The animal's abdomen is light, almost white. Very rarely - in about one animal out of 1500-2000 - pure black individuals are found. However, despite the coloring, from the point of view of species they continue to remain typical gray rats.

On a note

The Pasyuk's fur contains a large number of guard hairs, longer than all the others. Therefore, gray rats often look somewhat disheveled and “untidy” (as if dirty).

The picture shows a gray rat having a meal:

The tail of a rat is an object of disgust for many aesthetes. It is naked, covered with sparse short transparent hairs and a rough epidermis resembling scales.

Gray rats are quite easily distinguished from their relatives, with whom they live together in different parts of their range. For example:

1. Reliable species identification of gray and black rats is carried out by measuring the mass and size of the body, as well as the length of the tail: the pasyuk is larger, heavier, its tail is always shorter than the body. The appearance of the animal is also assessed - the black rat has larger eyes and ears, an elongated muzzle, and a more “fluffy” tail. Experts are also able to distinguish these species based on their skeletal features. For example, the pasyuk has fairly straight parietal crests of the skull, while in the black rat they are strongly curved. It is noteworthy that there are light populations of black rats, the representatives of which are very similar in color to their gray counterparts;
2. The pasyuk differs from the Turkestan rat in having coarser fur and larger size.

The photo below shows a gray rat:

And here it is black:

And the appearance of the gray rat itself is heterogeneous. There are at least two of its subspecies - Rattus norvegicus caraco, indigenous, smaller, common in Transbaikalia, the Far East, Mongolia, Korea and Eastern China. And the main one is Rattus norvegicus norvegicus, found in all other parts of the range.

Interestingly, the Latin name for the gray rat is a consequence of a scientific error. This species was described by the British zoologist John Berkenhout, who noticed that pasyuks are most numerous in port cities. He decided that the animals sailed to England on ships from Norway, and suggested that it was in Norway that their natural habitat was located.

As a result, he gave the animals the specific epithet “norvegicus”. The irony is that in reality, at that time, gray rats had not yet penetrated into Norway, and most likely came to England from Denmark.

However, the subspecies that has spread throughout the world is named by the same epithet, because it was the one that was described for the first time, for science it is nominative, and according to tradition, its subspecies name duplicates the specific one. Such a forced double mistake...

On a note

Today, taxonomists believe that domestic and laboratory rats have developed a sufficient number of specific features to distinguish them into a separate subspecies.

On agricultural lands in Russia, the gray rat can be confused with some other animals. Most often, a water vole is mistaken for it - a rodent of the hamster family, which is really similar to the pasyuk in color and body size. But the water vole has shorter legs, and the head is even more massive and less elongated.

Photo of a water vole:

And for comparison - a gray rat:

In northern regions, rats (especially young ones) are sometimes confused with voles or lemmings. Upon closer inspection, such errors are quickly revealed: rats are usually larger, have a slimmer body and a longer tail.

The mistakes themselves are due to the fact that the animals are noticed out of the corner of the eye when they make their way through the grass or quickly hide in holes. In addition, the further north you go, the less often representatives of this species are found outside human habitation, which means that an animal caught somewhere in the taiga is most likely not a rat.

Features of behavior

These creatures prefer to live in groups and endure loneliness only when necessary. The family always has a main male, a pair of his deputies, a harem of females and simple members (young individuals, weak males) who do not take part in reproduction. There is no mutual assistance between them, just like there is no communal labor like ants or bees. Among rats, everyone cares only about themselves, but if a stranger suddenly joins the family, they kill him together, although, in principle, they are not aggressive and do not attack unnecessarily.

The gray rat also resorts to the help of its fellow tribesmen to obtain food. The photo above shows how they steal birdseed as a well-coordinated team. Another feature of a collective organization is the fact that a poison that kills one member of the family will be avoided by others. These animals are smart and quick-witted. An experiment was conducted in which cheese was placed in a maze, and the rat not only quickly found the treat, but also remembered the path, and if the food was moved to another place, the animal no longer used the old path, although the smell of cheese remained there.

Why are rats dangerous to health?

Rats are carriers of pathogens of dangerous diseases. The list of diseases includes typhus, Derrick-Burnett disease, leptospirosis, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, toxoplasmosis, tulyamalaria, toxocariasis, fevers, streptobacillosis. They can be infected with rabies, but cases of transmission of rabies from rats to humans are rare. The main danger lies in borne diseases. They contaminate food and water sources with saliva, urine and excrement. They can become a source of fire, chewing through wires and causing a short circuit.

Gray rat: habitat

In nature, these rodents settle only where there are sources of water, without which they cannot survive even three days. They prefer lowlands overgrown with vegetation, but can also climb mountains. They don't bother people at all. Only rats that live near humans are harmful. Some are permanent tenants, others are temporary, leaving in the spring to live freely and returning in the fall. They live in boiler rooms, basements, barns, and can live in high-rise buildings, but they rarely rise above the 9-10th floor.

In cities, rats have chosen sewer systems and subways, port docks and store warehouses. In villages, they live on livestock farms, poultry houses, and fruit and vegetable processing factories. One rat family controls a territory of up to 2 thousand m2, which all its members regularly mark with urine. In case of food shortage, rodents can expand the boundaries of their kingdom.

Harm to human farmer

In a household, an ordinary rat causes quite a bit of damage.

• They eat and steal harvests of grain, beans, and beans from barns. They damage storage containers (bags, boxes, boxes). They chew vegetables and fruits.
• In a suburban area, rodents prefer to feast on vegetables, berries, fruits, roots of plants and garden flowers.
• Pasyuki gnaw through the walls of buildings and barns, damaging furniture and wires. Chewing not only affects the appearance of a residential building, but can also cause short circuits and fires.
• Rats pose a danger not only to human health. Cases of rodent attacks on pets are not uncommon.

Rat houses

In nature, gray rats build their home in a hole about 80 cm deep. The length of the corridor reaches several meters. In the very depths, the animals make a nest, insulating it with blades of grass, feathers, and hairs. The common gray rat, living close to the water, in order to avoid flooding during floods, settles in hollows or builds a nest in a tree. Rodents that live near people build nests from all available materials. They can make kubla in things, for example, in a closet that is rarely looked at, in carpets rolled up for storage, in hay that has been folded for storage. In nests, females care for babies, and several broods can be in one place at the same time, and mothers care for the children together.

Signs of infection

Norway rats are difficult to spot during daylight hours. Detection during the daytime is a sign of severe infestation. The presence of holes in the area adjacent to the building is also an indicator of infection. Also signs of infection are chewed food and communication cables; capsule-shaped excrement scattered along the most frequently used passages and passages; noises - rats can climb walls, so you can hear a characteristic scratching sound; rustling in the area of ​​floors and interfloor ceilings; prints - in dusty places, on the ground or sand, you can find rat paw prints.

Nutrition

What does this rodent eat? The gray rat is an omnivore. In nature, its diet consists of insects, lizards, chicks, bird eggs, cereals, root vegetables, and fruits. Rodents living near water eat small fish, mollusks, and crustaceans. Rats that settle in populated areas eat everything that they can steal from a person - any prepared food, any products, garbage, leftovers. It’s hard to understand why, but they chew paper, clothes, shoes, polystyrene foam, wooden products, electrical wiring - in short, everything that their powerful teeth can bite through. In villages, these little monsters eat chickens, newborn rabbits, and bite off the paws of adult rabbits that are locked in small cages. Male rats even eat their own children. Females are a little kinder; they eat only those babies that seem weak to them. They can survive only 4-5 days without food.

Prevention measures

To ensure that rats are as little interested in your home as possible, you need to monitor its condition and follow the following recommendations:

• do not leave trash and keep order in the area around the house;
• eliminate the presence of even the smallest through holes in the walls or roof;
• get rid of sources of standing water on the site;
• do not leave leftover food outside at night;
• get a cat or dog of a breed that is excellent at hunting rodents.

Reproduction

Fantastic fertility explains why, despite all the measures taken, the gray rat population increases every year. Reproduction in nature of these animals is seasonal, but in populated areas, where there is always food and warm shelter, it is year-round. Females bear offspring for about 3 weeks. There are most often about 10 rat pups in a litter, but there are known cases when there were up to 20. After lambing, 18 hours later, the new mothers do not refuse to mate again. Babies enter the world as tiny helpless lumps weighing up to 5 g. They are blind and naked. Their mothers clean them, feed them milk, and warm them. On the 14th, or less often on the 17th, the children’s eyes open, and after another 7-8 days they begin adult life. Young females rarely mate immediately. As a rule, this process begins within a year.

Interesting Facts

Despite the harm the Gray Rat causes to humans, one cannot fail to note the high intelligence of this animal. Of the huge number of facts confirming this, in particular it is worth highlighting the following:

In France at the beginning of the last century, the food market was closed and was about to move to another location. The day before the move, all the rats that lived in this market, as if on command, got up and went to the place where the market was supposed to move. Local residents were incredibly surprised, because the relocation of the market was only mentioned in the newspapers.

Once in a warehouse with dairy products, rodents found a way to get to kefir, which was packaged in glass bottles with a narrow neck. Pasyuki easily opened the foil caps and, sitting on a nearby bottle, lowered their tail inside. Then they took out the tail, licked all the kefir off it and put it back into the bottle.

We recommend reading: 20 facts about rats that you definitely didn’t know.

Gray rat or Pasyuk.

Achievements

The gray rat (pasyuk), if nothing threatens it, is very good-natured, busy only with getting food, and in search of it it can cover up to 20 km in a day. If she has to flee, she is able to reach a speed of 10 km/h, jump over an obstacle up to 2 m high, dive, swim more than 20 km. There are societies that organize rat Olympics, which include the so-called “pentathlon” - running, jumping, overcoming obstacles (climbing), lifting weights and tightrope walking.

A rodent can stay in water for up to 4 days. It likes the climate to be mild, but even in temperatures down to -18 °C it lives without any particular difficulties, and even reproduces. Confirmation of this is rat nests with live pups found in freezers, made in animal carcasses. They are also comfortable in boiler rooms, where the air temperature is about +45 °C. Rats do not die from radiation up to 300 roentgens/hour, and they are able to feel it with their nose.

How to force the management organization to destroy rodents in the house?

It should be kept in mind that even if one rat was spotted in an apartment, this is a sure sign that a colony of rodents is already living in the house. Since rats almost never settle in apartments, but come to them only in search of food.

The management company is responsible for the maintenance of common property, ensuring the safe living of citizens, and compliance with sanitary standards. Her responsibilities include ensuring regular deratization and disinfestation of common areas, which include basements, technical rooms, stairs and landings, elevators and elevator shafts, and common corridors.

So the first authority to contact if rats appear in the house is the management company. Residents need to write a statement in which they demand pest control, referring to regulations, the Decree of the State Construction Committee and the Rules for the maintenance of common property.

The application is submitted to the Criminal Code, receives a mark of acceptance and waits for a response within the 10 days required by law. After this period, representatives of the management organization are obliged to provide a response and set deadlines for carrying out measures to exterminate rodents.

Capabilities

The gray rat lives up to 3 years, but this is only if it is not sick, there is plenty of food, and there are no enemies. Usually such an idyll occurs only in laboratories or in home care. In nature, rats rarely live longer than one and a half years. Their abilities are unique. The fact that they anticipate earthquakes is not particularly surprising, because many animals can do this. But the fact that rats can predict where a shell will land is truly amazing. During the war, people, knowing about this talent of rodents, fled to those huts where the rats were hiding. A unique incident occurred in a market in France. It was moved to a new place, and already a day or two before, all the market rats had moved there, although, of course, no one informed them about this. Scientists have found that gray rats make about 5 thousand sounds, that is, they have their own “alphabet”.

These animals remember our faces and feel our character. They are able to pick up the slightest noise even in the 40 kHz range, which is used in electronic repellers. They distinguish two colors - blue and greenish. They dream, love classical music, and know how to laugh.

How do rats get into houses?

If they want, rats can get anywhere. Several factors contribute to this:

• these animals are very smart;
• rats have strong teeth with which they can chew through almost any material;
• Rodents jump quite high, climb vertical surfaces quite well and can even crawl into a narrow hole.

As soon as they appear in the yard, the rats immediately begin to explore the area and look for ways to enter the building. They know how to think logically, analyze information and draw conclusions. In addition, animals can act together.

Rats usually occupy the basement first. They can get into it through the door, technical openings, and communication joints. If there is even a small gap, rodents can easily chew through a passage (even in concrete).

Once in the basement, the rats begin to explore the entire building, moving through ventilation shafts, along sewer and water pipes, between ceilings, and inside walls.

War of blacks and grays

Once upon a time, black rats reigned supreme in Europe. They were known about and destroyed back in the ancient period, and in the Middle Ages they even organized teams of professional rat catchers. Despite all efforts, in the 14th century, millions of people died from a plague carried by black rats.

They are smaller than gray ones, do not like to move long distances and live in basements, preferring to live in attics and roofs. Now in cities the gray rat is replacing the black one, since it turned out to be less intelligent and weaker. If there is enough food, the grays do not bother their black brothers and crowd them out only when there is a shortage of food. In settlements remote from the sea, for example in Moscow, there are very few black rats left, but in coastal cities their numbers are huge, and on ships they still dominate.

Preventive protection measures

Rats are primarily attracted to food, water and shelter in the home. Therefore, it is necessary to limit access to each component.

Reduce food sources: Trash cans should be covered and emptied regularly. Bird food should be in specially designated feeders. Rats can even feed on bird excrement, so it is necessary to create separate feeding areas.

Reducing water sources: eliminating basement leaks; removal of direct sources of water, such as tanks, barrels from the surrounding area; eliminating the possibility of basement flooding.

Eliminate entry points: sealing holes and cracks in basements.

Benefits and harms

It is believed that a small gray rat is capable of leaving a sixth of the world’s population without food (photos of rodents are presented in the article). An adult needs only 20 g of food per day, but over the course of a year this figure increases to 10-12 kg. If you remember that there are now almost 18 billion rats on the planet, you can imagine how much food they eat.

Rats can infect humans with such deadly diseases as plague, Q fever, typhus, as well as non-lethal, but also very dangerous helminths, staphylococci and streptococci.

These animals spoil things, furniture, leave houses and even entire villages without electricity, gnawing through electrical wiring.

And yet they bring us benefits that are difficult to overestimate. Geneticists have found that the genes of humans and gray rats have more in common than those of humans and monkeys. This makes it possible to carry out highly complex genetic research, which is also facilitated by the incredibly fast reproduction of rodents. Scientists are testing new medications on them, studying many deadly diseases in order to understand how to treat us humans. Therefore, rats deserve not only hatred, but also respect.

Harm from rats

When approaching human possessions, rodents cause irreparable damage to garden crops, horticultural crops, poultry farming, and livestock farming. The appearance of rats in the house threatens with terrible diseases. This is why rats are dangerous to humans. Gray rats are carriers of more than 20 complex diseases:

• fever;
• tuberculosis;
• salmonellosis;
• typhus;
• plague.

They spread helminth eggs and more than 60 pathogens.

Rodents cause economic harm. The upper teeth are constantly growing, lengthening by 1 mm per day. Animals are forced to grind them off on hard materials. But they do not encroach on structures that are stronger than tooth enamel. Gray rats chew wood, plastic, foam, brick, plastic, rubber. Electrical wiring, furniture, walls, interior items, and car wires often suffer.