(One rat got bitten in the balls so bad, his intestines were ripped out). The Humane Society stepped in and safely removed over 2000 rats from Glen's home, which were then adopted out, an ongoing.
In this story, which originally aired Oct. 19, 2008, CBS News Correspondent Martha Teichner takes a closer look at whether rats are really as bad as they're made out to be.Bobby Corrigan may be the only man in New York City who usually carries rats in his backpack.' Although there's stories (of rats) as big as alley cats,' Corrigan says, 'the weight comes in at about a pound when it's alive.'
Corrigan is the city's rat czar, officially an urban rodentologist. In a typical alley here, Corrigan finds lots of garbage bags and a homeless man with a boombox at the far end. But after getting past the gross-out factor, he shows that.'
They love candy, fast food, meats, chickens, breads, bagels, pizza, anything they bump into,' Corrigan says.When you see one, you're not far from that rat's home. Rats usually live within a hundred feet of where you see them. 'They'll tunnel below the cement and the nest literally could be below your feet,' Corrigan says.Those tunnels don't have to be very big. 'A rat can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter,' Corrigan says.Corrigan even has a name for rats' natural instincts to live in compact spaces.' It's called huggamuggering,' he says.
'They'll get below ground in very small areas, and a whole family of rats can fit in a size of an area of just about half a basketball, for example, and they'll huggamugger together.' Anyone who's ever seen the movie 'Willard' knows people are conditioned to be terrified of rats. When rats bite, we're talking about 6,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.
Their teeth never stop growing. Rats gnash their teeth and gnaw to keep them ground down.Fleas on rats carried the plague to Europe during the 14th century. An estimated 75 million people died, but those were black rats.Your average city rat, not prone to plague-infected fleas, is called the Norway rat (even though it came from Asia, not Scandinavia).In the documentary 'Ratopolis' 60 Minutes aired in 1979, CBS News Correspondent Mike Wallace explained how rats swam through toilets. More recently, Pixar's animated film 'Ratatouille,' shows rats cooking in a French restaurant.Talented rats inspired psychologists at Bowling Green State University in Ohio to wonder how rats respond to a variety of tests.
Graduate student Emily Webber studies how rats react when tickled.' What I've seen is they love to be tickled on their tummy,' Webber says. 'They love to be flipped over.' She works near a bat-detector, which picks up sounds a bat or a rat makes which are too high for the human ear to detect.The machine converts the sounds from the high frequency down to a frequency that humans can decipher.Neuroscientist Casey Cromwell says rats make chirping sounds when they're playing together.' Just as when two children are out on the playground potentially or in the living room on the couch or tickling one another and giggling and laughing, that's what it looked like to us, and so we've been calling it 'rat laughter.'
'So can animals who laugh be all bad?Rat breeder Meghan Rabon of northern New Jersey doesn't think so. She has 35 rats, and Rabon's named all of them. They can learn to come when called.Rabon's rats are Norway rats, just like the ones in dark alleys, but somehow with Rabon they seem different.Rabon has a bunch of baby rats that are about a week old. She says they grow very fast and by the time these little creatures are six weeks old - if left to their own devices - they'll be multiplying exponentially.A female can have a dozen or so pups (as the babies are called) every three weeks.So is it true or false that in New York there's a rat for every person?'
The one-rat-per-person is totally a myth,' Corrigan says. 'I'm going to say it's far less.' Corrigan prowls the city at night, like a rat detective. But after a career of trying to eradicate them, he says, 'Actually I love rats.' By CBS News Correspondent Martha Teichner.
Just like mice, rats are special and intelligent animals, they seem to understand concepts more quickly than many other animals.they may seem to be smaller in size but they can reason their way out of a bad situation. Rats can be smarter than humans, and this explains why they often avoid traps, repellents and even their common predators. Rats are known to display emotions similar to those of humans, for instance, they do feel lonely, depressed, stressed and anxious. Studies have even shown that rats can feel regret over opportunities they missed.Rats are also smart because they are extremely social, they easily communicate with other rats through smell, touch and making high frequency sounds that humans cannot detect.
When rats become emotionally attached to other rats in the family, they often display so much affection towards them. Rats can show affection through cuddling, grooming and licking.
Rats are able to bond socially like humans. Rats are able to groom themselves several times a day and to a large extent they are cleaner than you can imagine.Rats demonstrate empathy towards each other, studies have shown that, rats often help each other, when in difficult situations. Rats are able to recognize the expression of pain from other rats and can do anything to help ease off such pains. Rats can be choosy in certain ways, they recognize what type of foods they want and go for them.
Rats may eat the most tasty parts of a meal and leave the rest and for this reason they are referred to as erratic eaters. The female rats will always defend their nests and litters when in danger, and except a rat is forced to live outside of its cage, its skin normally produce a nice scent.Rats can always create alternative ways to access or leave a house. When you block their main routes, they often use their claws, and mouths to dig through another route that may become very difficult to detect. Rats can also smell the presence of predators from afar, thus they can avoid them, predators such as cats can hover close to rat nest, but they may find it difficult to catch rats.
Rats can also detect a trap that has bait. When a bait is not properly set, a rat can detect whether the bait in on a trap and may start avoiding the area.Go back to the home page.If you need rats help, click my for a pro near you.© 2001-2018.Website content & photos by Trapper David.Feel free to email me with questions.