As with any pest control program, first understanding and identifying your target animal, the rat, is critical.
Each rat control situation is unique and must be approached accordingly. Carefully examining the site to determine possible hazards and the control tool that will work best is needed. It's important to use the safest control strategy to get the job done in the most expeditious manner.
Norway and Roof Rats
What good can be attributed to rats - the most destructive creatures in the world! As commensal rodents, they live off man and give nothing beneficial in return. Rats spread disease, damage structures and contaminate food and feed.
Rodents have been a pest for thousands of years. As agricultural pests, rats damage on-fifth of the world's crops each year. Rats endanger livestock, consume feed, destroy crops and damage structures.
The real damage rats, like mice, cause is contamination. One pair of rats shed more than one million body hairs each year, and a single rat voids 25,000 droppings per year.
Rats threaten man by spreading disease. One example is the plague which killed 25 million Europeans in the 14th century and another 11 million people in Asia from 1898 to 1923.
Besides plague, rats transmit Murine typhus fever (Rickettsia mooseri), rat bite fever (Streptobacillus moniliformis), salmonellosis or bacterial food poisoning, Weil's disease or leptospirosis and trichinosis. Norway rats can carry the rabies virus, but seldom pass it to man since they usually fall victim to it first.
Diseases spread to wildlife and domestic animals by rats cause economic losses as well as the danger of being passed to man. Disease include plague, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, melioidosis, brucellosis,tuberculosis, pasteurellosis, rickettsial diseases, viral diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease, and helminthic diseases such as trichinosis.
However, there is some benefit derived from rats. The 'cute' white pet rat is really bred for biological, medical and toxicological research.
The Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) and the roof rat(Rattus rattus) are not native North American species, travelling to the United States with the first explorers. The two species quickly invaded the continent because of their adaptability and fertility. Norway rats are found throughout the United States while roof rats primarily inhabit southeastern, Gulf Coast and southwestern states.
As with any rodent species, successful control depends on proper identification. Norway and roof rats differ in size, habits, food preferences and regions inhabited. Techniques that eliminate one species may not eliminate the other.
Norway and roof rats should not be confused with the smaller Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans). The Polynesian rat inhabits the South Pacific region, including Hawaii, and has not yet invade the continental United States.
Below are links to different facts on rats, you may choose text only pages or pages with pictures and illustrations.
As with any pest control program, first understanding and identifying your target animal, the rat, is critical.