- April 4th is celebrated as World Rat Day. This day was chosen in honour of the date of incorporation of the Ratlist, a mailing list that’s dedicated to the care and upkeep of pet rats.
- A rat’s whiskers are its “hearing” devices. The whiskers pick up vibrations from the ground and inform the rat the size of the object/creature coming towards it and the direction it is coming from.
- Rats have been observed making a high-pitched laughing noise when they play.
- A rat’s teeth never stop growing. They can grow up to 5 inches per year. These teeth are so strong, they can gnaw through lead and aluminum sheeting!
- Rats have really good memories and can recognize faces & places. Their superb memory is one of the reasons why they don’t get lost in mazes and drain pipes.
Bonus
In countries like Cambodia, Angola and Zimbabwe, Giant African rats are trained to detect landmines. In fact, these rats have saved countless lives through their super-rat landmine-detecting abilities.
To qualify as a landmine-detector, the rats have to undergo a gruelling 6-9 months training and must pass an accreditation test. Read all about this interesting process here. You can also meet some of these heroes at Apopo.
-NISHA PRAKASH
Artfully Wild 