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Rats - (Rodents)
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Rats,
like house mice, are mostly active at night. They have poor eyesight,
but they make up for this with their keen senses of hearing, smell,
taste, and touch.
Rats constantly explore and learn about their environment, memorizing
the locations of pathways, obstacles, food and water, shelter, and
other elements in their domain.
They quickly detect and tend to avoid new objects placed into a
familiar environment; rats may gain entry to structures by gnawing,
climbing, jumping, or swimming through sewers and entering through the
toilet or broken drains.
Rats can squeeze beneath a door with only a 1/2-inch gap. |
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If the door is
made of wood, the rat may gnaw to enlarge the gap. Rats consume and
contaminate foodstuffs and animal feed. They also damage containers and
packaging materials in which foods and feed are stored.
Rats cause problems by gnawing on electrical wires and
wooden structures (doors, ledges in corners, and in wall material) and
tearing up insulation in walls and ceilings for nesting. There are two
common species of rats found in most of the premises they are NORWAY RATS and ROOF RATS.
Norway rats may undermine building foundations and
slabs with their burrowing activities. They may also gnaw on all types
of materials, including soft metals such as copper and lead as well as
plastic and wood. If roof rats are living in the attic of a residence,
they can cause considerable damage with their gnawing and nest-building
activities. |
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They also damage garden crops and ornamental
plantings.Among the diseases rats may transmit to humans or livestock
are murine typhus, leptospirosis, trichinosis, salmonellosis (food
poisoning), and ratbite fever. Plague is a disease that can be carried
by both roof and Norway rats.
Controlling the rats is involved with high technicality
and experience, each species has different method of moving and
dwelling in the human habitation.
There are several type of control method is adopted in
the present scenario, few or common among them are by trapping with
different type of traps and killing with poison baits like
anticoagulant and non-anticoagulant. These rats could be trapped
with glue boards, killed by shooting and repelled by ultrasonic waves
also |
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