The next time you come across a rat darting furtively for cover, consider this: It might just want to have a playful game of hide-and-seek.
Plants & Animals
Sep 12, 2019
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811
New York unveiled its latest weapon Thursday in the city's long-running war against rats—alcohol.
Ecology
Sep 05, 2019
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44
Seeing rats in the backyard or, worse yet, in the house, can send people into panic mode, and for good reason.
Plants & Animals
Aug 19, 2019
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24
It's dark and I'm parked in an alley near a lopsided compost bin. I have a notepad, binoculars and a lukewarm cup of coffee—everything needed for a successful stakeout. I am waiting for them.
Plants & Animals
Aug 13, 2019
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Researchers at Stanford University have found that spraying a gel on the internal tissues of animals after cardiac surgery greatly reduces adhesions, fibrous bands that form between internal organs and tissues. Adhesions ...
Materials Science
Aug 07, 2019
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188
Rats! They eat our food, chew through our property and spread all sorts of nasty diseases. And they are gross (right?), with those naked tails and quick, unpredictable movements. Rats invade our homes—our castles!—the ...
Ecology
Jul 11, 2019
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0
For most humans, life on these jagged islands off the coast of San Francisco would be a nightmare: Waves lash the shore with treacherous force, the stench of guano fills the air, and the screech of seagulls is so loud that ...
Ecology
Jul 09, 2019
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0
Raising children can be a tough job, especially when doing it alone, but some animals like meerkats and mongooses work together to raise their young. Studies of these cooperative creatures are revealing how this highly social ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 27, 2019
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0
The naked mole-rat is perhaps one of the most bizarre beasts on the planet. At first glance, it looks like little more than a cocktail sausage with legs and teeth. But beneath its wrinkly pink skin, this creature's strange ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 18, 2019
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191
African mole rats are insensitive to many kinds of pain. As an international research team led by the MDC's Gary Lewin reports in Science, this characteristic has allowed mole rats to populate new habitats. Thanks to a genetic ...
Plants & Animals
May 30, 2019
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50 species
Stenomys Thomas, 1910
Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus. Many members of other rodent genera and families are also called rats and share many characteristics with true rats.
Rats are typically distinguished from mice by their size; rats are generally large muroid rodents, while mice are generally small muroid rodents. The muroid family is very large and complex, and the common terms rat and mouse are not taxonomically specific. Generally, when someone discovers a large muroid, its common name includes the term rat, while if it is small, the name includes the term mouse - scientifically, the terms are not confined to members of the Rattus and Mus genera. Compare the taxonomic classification of the Pack rat and Cotton mouse.
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