I think this thread calls for an experiment… Willard?
Well, it could if … wait
…I’m not doing this any more. It’s silly, and it makes the rat cry.
Oooh look! Smiley things! Pretty.
My point? We are in a thread that asks whether pack of marauding rats can slay humans, and you ask what the point is? We have extrapolations from squirrel-speeds, statements of barefooted rat-stomping, and - hey - I missed this one from Sage Rat:
“And I doubt a rat would be able to move faster than an equally sized dog”
Which is an amusing image on which to end my posts to this thread, particularly as it seems like the rat has now somehow managed to burrow into your arse.
I’m glad we agree on something.
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Which is an amusing image on which to end my posts to this thread, particularly as it seems like the rat has now somehow managed to burrow into your arse.
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Would you kindly explain this comment?
Whaaaa? (Suspects Boldface might have been hitting the bottle when writing his posts.)
There are rats larger than chihuahuas, so this isn’t a hypothetical statement.
Rats do not make good pets. They are cute, intelligent, friendly, and fun, but they die too soon. You just get one trained and playful, get really attached to it, and then it gets a tumor and dies. Teaches children about the life cycle I suppose, but all and all I’d rather have a pet that lives longer than 2 or 3 years.
Plus it makes you feel ridiculous to explain to your non-rat-loving friends that you spent $100 on cancer surgery for an animal that only cost you $2 to start with.
Useless data point: Growing up my best friend had many pets, including a colony of Norway rats. One of them, a female, was his favorite and he used to let her out of her cage as long as he was in the room with her.
One day the rat attacked and killed his pet budgerigar which was also out of its cage and happened to be on the floor. He said they had been out together previously and always ignored each other.
From what I remember of his description of the attack it was very quick, too quick for him to even react. A quick pounce and a bite or two and the budgie was dead.
Cite (pops) for the OP the largest Authenticated Norway rat being 2.75 lbs
What about packs of rats? Could a group of rats kill a healthy adult human?
I’ll spin a semi-realistic possible Willard scenario for you:
With Norway Rats fairly often, the litters of numerous females will occupy the same nest, and all the young are cared for by the adults, regardless of who the true mothers are. This communal care makes the species something of a cooperative breeder.
From here
Anyway, imagine they are nesting in a basement in an old house and an adult woman falls through a floor and literally stumbles into the nest of 5-10 Moms - all the Moms are at home – they could attack the human then – not for predation but out of maternal instinct. Kill her? I dunno … mebe the rats’d need to be lucky - the lady unlucky – but it is not impossible
Rats have sharp teeth, but they have small mouths. No single rat bit will be instantly fatal to a healthy adult. Rat bite death would likely be due to blood loss from hundreds of bites. Meanwhile, any adult human can kill a rat in a blow or two.
So to kill your fictitious lady, the rats would have to bite again and again, 20-30 bites each before the lady grabbed and smooshed them. Rats are hard to catch if you are chasing them across the floor. They are not hard to catch if they are on your neck biting you. If the lady just lay there and allowed them to bite her without hitting back, then yes, the rats could kill her. But mice or sparrows could also kill her in this same scenario.
My old Grandpa always used to tell me: Never put a cat and a rat in a closed room together. The rat will always win.
Cats are for mice.
(Just thought I’d share that 
)
Boldface Type I’m not sure whether you’re addressing this barb to Colibri or to Sage Rat, but it really doesn’t matter. You need to remember you’re in General Questions. That kind of comment doesn’t belong in this forum. Kindly refrain.
samclem GQ moderator
Any rat will stalk and kill prey bigger than an insect if it has half a chance to do so. They aren’t fantastic predators but they are more than willing to hunt anything they poissibly can.
Rats are actually surprisingly predatory. They routinely prey on nestling birds, young mammals etc. Indeed rats have traditionally beenone of the largest causes of losses of even domestic chickens, while their introduction to isolated islands inevitably leads to the extinction of native birds (and reptile, and mammal) life due to predation on eggs and nest young.
If we want to talk large rats, then the Sumatra giant Bamboo rat must be a consideration, it gets up to around 8 pounds or so.
I’m not sure its actually a true rat or just a misnamed rodent.
Bamboo rats are certainly real rats. There are also African puched rats which are in the same size range. However I don’t think that either of them are particularly carnivorous and so probably pose no more threat than a black rat.
In contrast the Australian water rat is highly pradatory and routinely kills birds including chickens as well as small mammals, fish and snakes. I’d be more worried about one of those vicious little buggers than a much larger primarily herbivorous rat.
Do you have any kind of non-lethal fauna, in Australia?
There is one inoffensive Australian animal, and it’s very nervous.
“Rat” is just a general name that has been applied to many unrelated medium-to-large-sized rodents. It doesn’t have any technical meaning beyond that. Neither the Sumatran Giant Bamboo Rat Rhizomys sumatrensis nor African Giant Pouched Rats Cricetomys sp. are particularly closely related to the Norway and Black Rats (genus Rattus), although they are in the same family (Muridae).
Yes?