Rats live everywhere on the globe, and especially well feel next to the person. They are ugly voracious and prolific. One female rat is capable of giving birth to about a hundred of its kind in a year. Naturally, they are practically ineradicable.The most famous rats are a black rat and a gray rat-pasyuk, sometimes called a Dutch ship’s rat. The first species has 35 centimeters of length, of which 19 account for a long white tail. The second species is 42 centimeters long with an 18-centimeter tail. Both species have a legendary combat past.
Black rats in the Middle Ages terrorized the whole of Europe, devouring food supplies and condemning entire cities to starvation, and the gray in 1727 made a trek from the Caspian Sea to Italy. It happened after the earthquake in the region of the Caspian Sea. The rats moved in huge crowds to the west. Even the deep Volga did not stop them.
They were killed by thousands in its waters, many were eaten by birds of prey, wolves and foxes, but this was only a small part of their vast army. In that year, many fields and food barns were destroyed, many people and animals were bitten to death. At one of the Paris massacres of these animals was destroyed during the month 16000!
Rats perfectly tolerate the most difficult living conditions. They are very tenacious and neither frost nor water, nor even radiation, does not stop them. Thus, rats lived on one of the islands where nuclear weapons tests were conducted. A year after the nuclear explosion, they not only did not perish, but multiplied in a great variety, and their average length exceeded 1 meter.
The main enemies of rats, except humans, are cats and some breeds of dogs. Among other things, rats eat each other, than very much help their own extermination. It happens that parents devour their children, and vice versa. There is a very interesting phenomenon in rats, the so-called “rat king”. It is a tangle of rats tightly bound together by tails and paws. In such a “rat king” there are sometimes up to 50 rats. They live only at the expense of the offerings of other rats, since they can not move themselves. This phenomenon is still a mystery for scientists. Rats are highly gifted animals.
Their intelligence and courage are manifested, first of all, in the obtaining of food. It is said that rats deftly steal eggs. One rat grasps the egg with its front paws, and the other drags it into the hole by the tail. They very original stealing sour cream from cans and narrow vessels. One of the rats lowers the tail there, and then lets the other lick it.
Rats are terrible for humans because they carry a terrible disease on their skin – the plague. This is one of the reasons for the irreconcilable struggle against them. For the extinction of this species, it seems, should not be afraid, because rats very quickly acquire immunity to various poisons. Some scientists believe that if an atomic war breaks out, only cockroaches and rats remain on the ground.
