20 interesting facts about rats: features that you might not know about

Rats: friend or foe.

1. Rats receive positive emotions and can express them. Laughter they peculiarly show ultrasound when they play or tickle them. For the human ear, they are not audible, but other individuals distinguish it well.
2. Rats do not have color vision, they see everything in gray tones. And they perceive red and all its shades as pitch darkness.
3. Rats are very smart. They have abstract thinking, well-developed memory and they are cunning. They easily bypass obstacles and get out of labyrinths.
   

   Take, for example, how rats steal eggs from barns. One of them makes a kind of pillow out of herself, lies on her back, and an egg is rolled on her stomach. The second rat, an accomplice, carefully pulls it out by the tail, and the first holds the prey tightly with its paws.

4. Rats swim well and hold their breath for a long time. This allows them to stay under water for a long time, eat in water bodies and travel in sewers. But they, with the exception of a few species, do not like this and try to avoid water.
   

   Rats are excellent swimmers.

5. More about the intelligence of these animals. In the experiment, scientists confirmed that rats not only have good hearing, but also a taste for music. Small rat pups were divided into groups and included the music of Mozart, contemporary performers and the hum of a fan. As part of the experiment, the animals were given the opportunity to choose what music to hear, most chose the classics.
6. The first remains of rats that have been found date back to about 3 billion years ago. This is much earlier than humans.
7. On the tail of rats there are dense hairs that inspire an abomination to people. However, they can save someone's life, because they are an excellent suture material, dense, but pliable. I use it for eye surgery.
8. There is a temple in India where rats are revered as gods. This is Karni Mata, where more than 20 thousand individuals live. There is a kitchen where they prepare a warm floor especially for the animals so that the animals do not freeze in winter.
   

   Temple of the Karni Mata rats.

   According to legend, one of the goddesses' son drowned, and she asked the god of death to revive her beloved child. And he revived, in return, the goddess herself and her four sons turned into rats. On the territory of the temple live 5 white rats, which are identified with them. They are lured out and fed with goodies, hoping for a blessing.

9. Rats are very social creatures and do not live alone. They gather in colonies, the population of which can number up to 2000 individuals.
10. Animals surprisingly combine fearlessness and cowardice. They are capable of attacking prey or an enemy that is several times their size. But at the same time they suffer from stress and shock even to death.
    

    Rats are sociable and fearless.

11. They are durable and adaptable. They withstand long cold and hunger, go without water for a very long time and, if necessary, can gnaw through concrete or metal.
12. They have very good health, their teeth grow all their lives, they give birth often and a lot, sleep and dream. The sense of smell is very well developed, they immediately smell the minimum amount of poison in food. By the way, these animals have a feeling of fullness, they do not overeat.
    

    Rats have a great appetite, but they don't overeat.

13. Rat colonies are very dangerous. In Ireland, they quickly destroyed marsh frogs, and on the Australian island of Lord Howe, 5 species of endemic animals that remained only on it.
14. This can be called foresight or a sense, but there are a number of facts. In Stalingrad, rats left their places of deployment before the bombing, from training grounds or test sites before launching weapons. Who is not familiar with the expression that rats are the first to run from a sinking ship.
15. They have a certain perfectionism. They love everything shiny and things that are perfectly shaped.
16. Rats develop tremendous speed, up to 10 km / h, jump up to 80 cm. But when the animal is in a state of aggression, they can overcome the height threshold of 200 cm.
17. In the Middle Ages, the blood of these animals was part of some potions, and in the modern world, some cultures use them as food.
18. The state of Illinois is apparently the most loyal. There, beating rats with a baseball bat can carry a $1000 fine.
    

    Domestic rat.

19. The intelligence of a rat is even higher than that of a cat. If desired and necessary, they are easily trained and amenable to training.
    

    Gambian rats, for example, serve on the search for unexploded mines. One of them, Magawa, even received a medal for bravery.

20. Rats are kind to relatives. They carry food and warm the sick. An interesting experiment was carried out. Behind a transparent wall, one rat was given food, and several individuals were electrocuted in front of her eyes. Moreover, during the time of this experiment, the blows were even stronger and even deadly. The rat doomed itself to starvation and did not touch the food, but others did not suffer from the current.

That's all. Such a selection may not correct the general opinion about rats as pests, but it will introduce them closer and open them from a new perspective. By the way, one Catholic priest was so afraid of them that he even distinguished rats from the church.