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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.
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?
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.