Think You Know Rats? 101 Wild Rat Facts

101 Rat Facts You Probably Didn’t Know

1. Rats can have as many as 20 babies at a time in a single litter.
2. The Norway rat didn’t actually originate in Norway.
3. Rats destroy an estimated 20% of agricultural products worldwide each year.
4. Rats have an incredibly strong sense of smell.
5. The kangaroo rat can go its average 10-year life span without drinking any water.
6. Antarctica is the only continent that remains naturally uninhabited by rats.
7. Rat catchers used to be a common job in urban Europe, often working with trained “ratters” like terrier dogs.
8. Rat control throughout history has been essential for reducing rat-borne disease.
9. Rats are mammals in the order Rodentia, which is why they’re called rodents.
10. In many countries, rat meat is still eaten. You can find it in parts of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Ghana, China, and Vietnam.
11. Because their sense of smell is so good, rats have been trained to detect landmines.
12. Rats have also been trained to help diagnose diseases such as tuberculosis using their sense of smell.
13. Rats can carry pathogens that cause diseases such as bubonic plague, Lassa fever, leptospirosis, and Hantavirus.
14. When Pixar created the film Ratatouille, animators kept rats in the studio to study their movements and bring the characters to life.
15. The bush rat is the most common indigenous rat species in Australia.
16. Karni Mata Temple in India is home to over 25,000 black rats, which are worshipped there as sacred animals.
17. Ancient Romans didn’t have distinct words for “rat” and “mouse.” They called them big mouse (mus maximus) and little mouse (mus minimus).
18. Many famous fictional “rats” include Stuart Little, Remy from Ratatouille, Master Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Chuck E. Cheese (who was rebranded as a mouse in 1997).
19. The modern black rat likely spread across Europe during the Roman conquests.
20. Some female rats can come into heat as quickly as 10–24 hours after giving birth, in a phenomenon called postpartum estrus.
21. Rats make ultrasonic sounds similar to laughter when they’re happy, especially during play or when being tickled.
22. The fancy rat (Rattus norvegicus domestica) is the most common pet rat and is a domesticated relative of the Norway rat.
23. Rats can lift almost 1 pound, more than their average body weight.
24. Some of the first animals sent into space were rats launched from France in 1961.
25. Rats have excellent spatial memory and can memorize a route after navigating it once.
26. Rat jaws are built like miniature alligator jaws and can exert up to about 7,000 pounds per square inch.
27. An unchecked rat infestation can easily cost a home or business more than $25,000 in damage and losses.
28. More than 51 species of rat have been described by scientists.
29. Rats are generalist survivors and can adapt to many environments, changing their diet to match whatever resources are available.
30. Victorian rat catcher Jack Black is often credited with helping domesticate rats and introducing the fancy rat. Even Queen Victoria kept pet rats.
31. Ancient Romans believed a white rat crossing your path was good luck, while a black rat was a bad omen.
32. Rats are ticklish and respond to tickling with “laughter”-like vocalizations.
33. A rat’s tail helps it balance, communicate with other rats, and regulate body temperature.
34. Rats don’t have tonsils or gallbladders, but they do have belly buttons.
35. Rats don’t sweat. Instead, they regulate body temperature by constricting or dilating blood vessels in their tails.
36. A rat can fall from as high as 50 feet without serious injury.
37. Rat tooth enamel is extremely tough and is often said to be stronger than steel.
38. When a group of rats’ tails become entangled in sticky substances like sap or gum, they can form a “rat king,” a rare but terrifying phenomenon.
39. Rats have such strong teeth that they can chew through glass, cinder block, wire, aluminum and even lead.
40. Rats eat their own feces to extract every bit of nutritional value from their food.
41. Rats have been known to spontaneously restart their hearts after electric shock.
42. A group of rats is called a “mischief.”
43. Rats are largely color-blind and have relatively poor eyesight compared to their other senses.
44. Two compatible brown rats and their descendants can produce up to 15,000 rats in just one year.
45. Evidence suggests that birds in ancient Egypt preyed on Mediterranean rats.
46. Young rats can squeeze through a hole just 0.96 inches (about the size of a quarter) in diameter.
47. The Canadian province of Alberta (population about 4.25 million) is the largest inhabited area known to be completely free of established rat populations.
48. The rat is the first animal in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese Zodiac. 2020 was the most recent Year of the Rat.
49. Animals commonly called “rats” aren’t all in the genus Rattus; some are in other genera like Neotoma, Bandicota, and Dipodomys.
50. The pack rat (or wood rat) is native to the deserts of the western United States and northern Mexico.
51. Rats are capable of playing hide-and-seek and actually seem to enjoy the game.
52. Rodents must constantly gnaw to keep their ever-growing teeth worn down and usable.
53. The earliest known record of a rat-catching dog is “Hatch,” whose remains were found on the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship.
54. Hatch was likely brought aboard specifically to control the ship’s rat population.
55. Rat torture has been used as a brutal method of interrogation by various regimes, including some South American dictatorships in the 20th century.
56. Rats can jump about 2 feet straight up from a standstill and even higher with a running start—proportionally like a human jumping onto a garage roof.
57. The United States reports roughly 14,000 rat attacks on people each year.
58. The royal rat catcher of Queen Victoria once gave an albino rat to Beatrix Potter, author of the Peter Rabbit stories.
59. As rats mature, their teeth turn from white to yellow; baby rats start with white teeth.
60. Rats maintain a surprisingly complex social structure with leaders, assistants, outcasts, and rebels.
61. Mice tend to eagerly investigate new things, but rats are neophobic—afraid of new items—which makes them harder to bait with unfamiliar foods.
62. The Gambian pouched rat from Africa resembles a Norway rat but can grow to around 15 pounds.
63. Rats have excellent hearing and communicate using ultrasound frequencies humans cannot hear.
64. The NHL’s Florida Panthers have a “rat-trick” tradition, where fans throw plastic rats on the ice during the playoffs.
65. Rats thrive on a balanced diet that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables.
66. Many rats are strong swimmers and can hold their breath for up to 3 minutes.
67. Rat teeth never stop growing; the front teeth can grow 4.5 to 5.5 inches per year.
68. The old Jameson Whiskey distillery in Dublin budgeted milk for its cats, who were kept to control rats in the barley warehouses.
69. The earliest known record of the Pied Piper legend comes from Hamelin, where a church had a stained-glass window depicting the story around 1300.
70. Rats can climb brick and cement walls thanks to their strong claws and agile bodies.
71. Rats groom themselves constantly and are often considered even cleaner than cats.
72. The Bosavi woolly rat, discovered in 2009 in Papua New Guinea, is believed to be one of the largest rats, reaching about 32 inches long (including the tail) and weighing more than 3 pounds.
73. Rats can be trained to perform tricks and will learn to respond to their own names.
74. “Ratty,” a main character in the 1908 children’s novel Wind in the Willows, helped cement the rat’s place in popular literature.
75. Black and brown rats are thought to have evolved from common ancestors at the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch.
76. Rats are master communicators and use body language, touch, smell, and sound to convey information—much like humans.
77. In 2016, the Staten Island Yankees held a naming contest, and “Pizza Rats” became a finalist after a viral video of a rat dragging a slice of pizza. The team periodically plays as the Staten Island Pizza Rats.
78. Rats learn which foods are safe by smelling the breath of other rats that have eaten them.
79. Maritime trade helped spread rats around the world as stowaways on ships.
80. Rats care for injured and sick members of their group, displaying strong social bonds.
81. Without companionship, rats can become lonely and depressed.
82. Rats give in to peer pressure: they’ll sometimes eat unpalatable food if other rats around them are eating it.
83. Like deer, male rats are called bucks and females are called does.
84. Rats reportedly ate around 10% of drug lord Pablo Escobar’s hidden cash each year—about $2.1 billion.
85. Rats use their whiskers in the dark to judge an object’s size, shape, orientation, and texture, a behavior known as “whisking.”
86. Scientists have found evidence that rats experience dreams.
87. Rat tastebuds are sensitive enough to detect a teaspoon of chocolate in over 1,300 gallons of milk.
88. While it depends on the species, the average lifespan of a wild rat is about one year due to predators and harsh conditions.
89. Rats have become devastating invasive species on isolated islands, where they prey on eggs and chicks of birds that evolved without mammal predators.
90. During a 6-hour heat period, a female rat can mate as many as 500 times.
91. Only about 12 rats per year manage to enter Alberta, Canada, and all are quickly eliminated by a specialized Rat Control Task Force.
92. Experiments suggest that rats can experience regret when they make a “bad” decision.
93. Rats in some areas of Iran grew so large that authorities reportedly used snipers to control the “cat-sized” rodents.
94. In 1954, Bombay (now Mumbai), India, briefly accepted dead rats as a form of tax payment to fight infestations, but people quickly exploited the system by breeding rats for profit.
95. Blue dye in M&Ms has been found to help reduce spinal injury in rats—though the amounts required turned the rats blue.
96. Rats grind their teeth (a behavior called bruxing) when stressed or in pain, but more commonly to express contentment and relaxation.
97. Rats can recognize individual people they’ve seen before.
98. Like hamsters, rats hoard food, which can lead to non-target poisoning when they stash rodenticide baits in new locations.
99. Rats cannot go more than about four days without food.
100. Rats are born with their eyes closed and are helpless without parental care. Their eyes open between 12 and 17 days, and they’re independent by about 21 days.
101. Rats have an excellent sense of taste and will often “test” new foods in small amounts to see if they make them sick.
102. Not all rat species like living near humans; some prefer remote areas. The largest known rat species was discovered deep in the Papua New Guinea jungle in 2009.
103. “Rats” spelled backwards is “star.” That’s a fact!