Man’s Most Constant Companion
If you spend any time enjoying the scenery of the village green, you may have noticed that the suburban wildlife present includes more than just mallard ducks and moorhens. You may have been lucky (or unlucky!) enough to spot one of the world’s most successful mammals – a brown rat.
Those of us who are keen gardeners with compost bins, or who keep rabbits or chickens, or who feed the birds regularly, will probably already be familiar with the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus). He’s an opportunist, eating just about anything he can get his paws on and his teeth into, and he lives pretty much wherever humans live (brown rats are found on every continent except Antarctica). The number of rats present in an area depends on the supply of food available, with numbers tending to increase in built-up areas. It has been estimated that here in the UK there are 1.3 rats for every human being, with these high numbers being attributed to rats being able to survive our relatively mild winters.
The success of the brown rat isn’t just due to its ability to eat anything and everything. Brown rats breed prolifically, with a well-nourished female being able to produce up to five litters a year of up to fourteen babies at a time. This means that, even if a large proportion of a local rat population is exterminated, the remaining rats will quickly restore the population to its previous level.
So what exactly is the problem with rats? Why is the hedgehog, another relatively common small mammal who visits our gardens, welcome, while the brown rat is so reviled? The answer, of course, lies mainly in the rat’s role as a spreader of disease - brown rats are associated with the spread of a variety of diseases, such as Weil’s Disease, Q Fever, cryptosporidiosis, and toxoplasmosis. (It should be noted, however, that the Brown Rat was not responsible for the spread of the Black Death, the outbreak of bubonic plague that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe back in the 14th Century – that was the black rat, Rattus rattus, which is now found mainly in warmer regions of the world.)
Rats are present on the village green because the location provides them with both shelter and food. The pond-side vegetation provides living space and somewhere to hide from the village cats and dogs, while litter dropped around the green and bread left over from feeding the ducks provides food – as do the ducks themselves in season, with the opportunistic rat not being averse to taking a duck egg or duckling if they get the chance.
What can we do to keep rat numbers down? While it is almost certainly unreasonable to expect to get rid of the rats entirely, we can all do our bit to help keep rat numbers at a reasonable level. In addition to pest control measures put in place by the local authorities, we can be careful not to drop litter (and preferably take it home for disposal), and refrain from feeding the ducks. Depriving the rat population of easy pickings will make it harder for them to survive and breed, and go some way towards preventing this fascinating little survival expert from becoming a public health problem.
References for the resources used in compiling this article are available on request.
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