Talk:Brown rat
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"Adult body weight averages 320 g in males and about 200 g in females, but a very large individual can reach 500 g"? What's the source of this? In my experience it's more like 300 g for does and 500 g for bucks. // Liftarn
- Could that be a difference between wild-living and domesticated rats? - MPF 23:51, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, read the article on fancy rats it describes them as 300 to 500 so it is that domesticated rats are heavier.
"Rats live wherever people live. It is often said that there are as many rats in cities as people, but that is an untrue urban legend. It is probable that New York City, for instance, has only 250,000 rats, not eight-million."
"Rats in cities are not wanderers. They stay within 65 feet (20 meters) of their nest, and take the same trails to their food source every time they go out. They will cross an alley, but not a street."
These two statements taken out as they are unfounded, and far from true, particularly the latter - MPF 23:51, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I read the above information in an article in the New York Times Magazine. I consider that to be an accurate resource. User:Dinopup
Robert Sullivan, in his recent Rats : Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants apparently roundly debunks the # of rats = # of people urban myth. Probably has other useful rat facts in it as well. Amazon quotes these: "if you are in New York... you are within close proximity to one or more rats having sex" and "26% of all electric cable breaks and 18% of all phone cable disruptions are caused by rats, 25% of all fires of unknown origin are rat-caused, and rats destroy an estimated 1/3 of the world's food supply each year.".- Nunh-huh 00:14, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- I would be very cautious about using anything from the Sullivan book. Sullivan is not a scientist. His "facts" are introduced like this.. "By one estimate...", "According to one study...", "One rat expert theorizes..." but none of these sources are actually identified. There are no notes that would identify any of the sources for this information. tom
The UK official National Rodent Survey found a 2003 UK population of 60 million Brown Rats, about equal to the UK human population. Whether that population density applies elsewhere may well vary. But the second para above is definitely inaccurate; rats most certainly cross streets, I've seen them do so on several occasions, and even more often found dead rats run over in the process of doing so. And any rat that used the same trail every time would very quickly fall prey to a predator; unpredictability of movements is a key to survival for any wild animal. - MPF 14:17, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- The only "National Rodent Survey" I can find is published by the National Pest Technichians Association, and while I can't find the 2003 edition anywhere, the 2005 edition doesn't have any estimated total population figures, nor would its methods be likely to give one. --bjh21 16:02, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
- Rats in cities have very few natural predators. tom
The 60 Million number is being used by the Keep Britain tidy group. It originally comes from an estimate made by Boulter a century previously where he equated 1 rat to each cultivated acre. UK now has a population of 60M hence 60M rats. See: Channon, D, Murfitt E. 2005. UK Rat myths explored International Pest Control, vol 47, 4 July/Aug 2005 192-4
The picture is of a fancy rat. Although fancy rats are biologically Rattus norvegicus, it feels like putting a picture of a dog to an article about wolves. Though I have never seen a wild brown rat, I doubt they ever look as "good" as the picture shows, bathed, fur shining and groomed etc. --Farside 15:19, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Cannibalism is described as a major cause of death in brown rats. This is a myth.
The source of the pet's litter should be carefully monitored, as wild animals make poor pets.
This doesn't seem to make sense. Has it been mis-edited? Loris 16:11, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Name
According to the entry on rats in Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County, Leonard and Dale Pitt, UC Press, 1997, "The Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus named them [Norway rats] as an ethnic joke." Thought it was an interesting allegation. jengod 07:23, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
- The second sentence in the introductory paragraph says that no one knows why they are called Norway Rats, but then the last sentence answers that question: "at that time it was still thought to have originated in Norway." Even if it's not techically redundant, it still is rather clumsy phrasing. CFLeon 00:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
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- Hello, I read somewhere that pet rats comes from a line that was domesticated from London 200 years ago and named 'wild city Norways'. Carl Linnaeus published his first work of classification in 1758. So I think the name originates during that era.
hydkat 08:49, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] cheap pets
unfortunately rats aren't cheap pets.. small, yes.. cheap no! they require a well balanced diet, litter/ bedding that is not going to cause them respiratory problems, toys to keep them challenged and entertained. and lots of love! Also, rats aren't hardy. All carry (whether resistant or not) mycoplasma, a respiratory disease. This, if active, is not curable and can cost a lot in vets bills. Females are also prone to mammary tumours. They should ALWAYS be kept in same sex groups; unless neutered or spayed. It isn't responsible to even think about keeping them together. I bought my latest pair as a pair of males. But one was a female and already pregnant. I know have lots of babies, many of them with myco.
[edit] Brown rats in science, citation needed
It will be tough to find a specific citation that says that when molecular biologists refer to rats it is usually R. norvegicus. It would be easy to list a host of citations where brown rats are used extensively. Perhaps the simplest way to support this statement is to point out the amount of genome information listed for R. norvegicus compared to R. rattus. --Aranae 23:11, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Proposed merges
I think there's room here for the one paragraph on Sprague Dawley rat and one paragraph from Wistar rat to be here instead. - UtherSRG (talk) 20:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
- agreed, and since the Sprague Dawley is just a strain of the Wister we can keep them in one section. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 23:43, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
David T. Bath 02:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC) : Wister rats are a special beast, so I'm not in favor of merging wister with r.norv. At some stage, the stub will be expanded to include a lot of details about their differences (relevant to experimental biol) to other rats, and even similarities/differences to humans. And goodness nows how much detail will come in when their DNA sequences are analyzed fully.
- i agree with you that there is definitely room for expansion, but in it's present state these two articles could easily be fit within the main article, once their sections are expanded enough then split them off into their own articles. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 20:11, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
- i agree on the merge, with redirects from new or existing Sprague Dawley, Sprague Dawley rat, Wistar rat, Sprague-Dawley and Sprague-Dawley rat. There are advantages with either strategy above (grow then split, or leave a stub to grow). However, the paragraphs under brown rats in science and the Wistar rat and Sprague Dawley rat pages are already quite redundant, and this redundancy will discourage attracting a group of people to diligently edit and expand any of them (the section or the pages). If the three are not merged, then the 'brown rats in science' section needs to be streamlined to not include information from the Wistar or Dawley pages. Further, the overall quality of the Brown Rat page is not completely up to gold standards yet (unsourced statements) and there doesn't appear to be people lining up to edit any of these three pages, so any voluntary editing efforts could be concentrated here to produce a gold-standard article, including wistar and sprague dawley sections, rather than diluted over three pages. As we now sit in April (8 weeks of polling), with the votes at 3:1 for merger, I recommend that, unless there are other rationales to be presented, we give the vote over to whomever next arrives and has the initiative to merge Wistar rat and Sprague Dawley rat articles in. Jethero 16:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
