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Rat Cunning May Allow For Island Colonization
weighn writes "It was assumed that most rat invasions begin with one or two rats coming ashore from ships. The journal Nature reports that a wild rat, captured and then released on a deserted New Zealand island as part of an experiment, amazed scientists by apparently swimming 400 metres through treacherous open water to reach another island." From the article: "Researchers wanted to know how hard it would be to spot a single invader, and how difficult it would be to capture. Razza had a small radio transmitter attached and was set free on the island. Scientists intended to recapture him within eight weeks, but Razza gave a new meaning to 'rat cunning'. He avoided all the scientists' traps, and after 10 weeks his radio signal failed. 'It would be fair to say that at that point we were worried,' Professor Clout said. The Conservation Department was also worried, as the island had been cleared of rats."
Should have let the little dude go for his efforts. I mean shit, I know I couldn't swim the equivalent of 400 meters after adjusting for the size difference between the two of us.
better make sure it's the same sex. Otherwise, it would just be their luck that the original rat would swim back, mate with it, have a few litters, and soon two formerly rat free islands would have booming populations of the little buggers.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The outwitting of humans only works because humans in general are ill-equiped to actually kill smaller rodents. The best thing to kill them is a smaller predator such as a large cat (maybe for smaller rats) and a dog (perferably a dachsund imo).
As for us killing them off, well humans have for years helped them out inadvertantly.
Being scavengers, our food stockpiles are great for them to use for an easy meal.
And killing off their natural predators. Anything from the killing of the cats in the middle ages because they were "witches familiars" to killing off wolves and other predators in nature also helps them survive.
In short, I am not sure if you could credit their survival of humanity to anything other then humans blundering when it comes to rats. Granted they are intelligent, but their survival of humanity has more to do with us not really doing the right things to kill them off. Traps, poison, and even isolation seem to not be enough as evidenced with this miracle rat.
In addition, lots of people have rats as pets now, so the odds are even lower that we will ever rid ourselves of this "menace". Their long-term survival probably has more to do with how well they bond with humans then their intelligence.
No, but how long would it live, and how many bird eggs etc. would it eat in the meantime?
I've also read that they'll develop a taste for certain foods --- e.g. if they habitually eat spicy food, they'll want spicy food. Also, quite interestingly, they like the foods that humans like. E.g. macraronic and cheese, banannas and Pasta. They hate the foods that we hate: raw vegetables. Fried chicken and pizza they really like! They are very human in their tastes.
This has probably got something to do with the energy contained in the food. Vegetables are very low on energy, pasta, cheese, bananas etc. on the other hand and energy bombs (fat, carbohydrates, proteins) compared to veggies. That's the way evolution has 'taught' both humans and rats: favor high-energy food. (Mind you, both humans and rats are omnivores, so this applies to omnivores only. Horses, cows etc. are still mostly restricted to a 'bad-tasting' veggie diet.)
OT: I can't stand when sites do this..
I hit the 'print' version button on their site, expecting to get a nicely formatted, less cluttered version of the article. and instead it just sends the javascript command to choose 'print' in your browser.
I'm seeing it more and more, and it bugs the crap out of me.
Seems like an obvious safeguard to take. And since the island had been (theoretically) cleared of rats, he wasn't getting any anyway.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain