Super Rats conquer Britain – they are clever and immune to poison

pests
Super rats are conquering Britain – they are clever and immune to poison

The clever animals often find a way into the house

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Is there a plague of rats? The rodents are now resistant to the typical rat poisons. They are said to be getting bigger and more obtrusive. Experts fear that with so much food being thrown away carelessly, Britain’s rat population will continue to grow.

Good years are coming for the rats. In many countries, the rat poisons used today are banned. Namely, rats do not eat simple poison, or more precisely, a rat is sent as a taster. If she dies, the others know that they are in danger from this food. That’s why they switched to particularly nasty poisons, so-called anticoagulants are offered to rats. Initially, the intake leads to nothing. A little later, the poisoned animal turns into a kind of “bleeder” – it begins to die from bleeding, because even small everyday injuries no longer heal.

Covered table for the rodents

But other animals and the environment also suffer from these toxins – so the rodenticides end up on the index. The British “Telegraph” describes an invasion of the super rats, which haunts our cities. Rats and rat plagues have always existed. Better hygiene in the cities has pushed them back, but the clever rodents seem to have adapted. and above all they find in the cities a richly set table. Today there are no buckets of slaughterhouse waste on the side of the road, instead enormous amounts of food are thrown away. And the rats have learned to help themselves from garbage cans. Together they can open lids. At public parks and tourist hotspots, bins are filled with goodies every day.

Invasion from the gully

Nottingham Trent University staff member Graham Sharpe told the newspaper his months-long struggle against the rat invasion of his home. At first it was noises in the ceiling. “They sounded really big, like badgers up there.”

Behind the walls and ceiling of his house there was a kind of second floor, in the cavities of the drywall and ceiling the rats had taken up quarters. A pest controller killed them, but it was no use, new ones kept coming. The problem was finally recognized: the rats from the sewage system got into the house through an old drain. The pest control business is therefore booming in Great Britain. “Rats are becoming more and more of a problem,” Craig Morris told the paper. He has been battling the plague for 15 years. He believes the rat population benefits from human waste, poor sanitation, and poor hygiene. In addition, more and more rats are immune to the anticoagulants. 78 percent are said to have developed genetic resistance to it.

And Morris shares another insight: the rats are getting bigger and bigger. The largest specimen that Morris killed had a body length of 30 centimeters – not including the tail. The rats aren’t healthy either. A 2014 study by Columbia University showed that the New York City subway rat carries 18 previously unknown viruses.

Rats “big like cats”

The seaside town of Tenby, Wales, is being terrorized by rats that grow “the size of cats”. They have nested in the cliffs of the tourist hotspot. Boatswain Roger Miles told the BBC it was “really worrying”. “Early in the evening, at dusk, early in the morning, there are rats really everywhere.”

“These rats are sometimes as big as cats, they’re really big animals.” In Tenby, the rats are likely to live on what’s left of tourism. Residents now fear the rats’ burrows are encouraging erosion in the scenic cliffs.

Even though the rats are smart and immune, they would be easy to defeat. Their reproduction is directly related to the food supply. Cities like Hong Kong have been able to drastically reduce the rat infestation through strict hygiene.

Sources: The Sun; BBC , telegraph

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