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Wild rats live off man and give nothing beneficial in return. Rats spread disease, damage structures and contaminate food and feed. Rats damage one-fifth of the world's food crop each year. The real damage is in contamination. One pair of rats shed more than one million body hairs each year and a single rat leaves 25,000 droppings in a year.
Rats transmit Murine typhus fever, rat bite fever, salmonellosis or bacterial food poisoning, Weils disease or leptospirosis and trichinosis, melioidosid, brucellosis, tuberculosis, pasteurellosis, rickettsial diseases, and viral diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease. Norway rats can also carry the rabies virus.
The Norway rat and the roof rat are not native North American species. They traveled to the new world with the first explorers. The two species quickly invaded the continent because of their adaptability and fertility. Norway rats are found throughout the United States while roof rats primarily inhabit southeastern, Gulf Coast and southwestern states.
Rats memorize their environment by body and muscle movement alone. They become so engrained by body movements that when objects are removed from their territory, rats will continue to move around them as if the objects where still there.
Successful control depends on proper identification of the different species. Norway and roof rats differ in size, habits, food preferences and regions. Techniques that eliminate one species may not eliminate the other.
Many times roof rats live in the upper stories of buildings, while Norway rats occupy the basement and first floor of the same building.
Rats visit fewer food sites than mice. However, rats eat much more at each site than mice.
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