Rat Pasyuk: description, photo

You are mistaken if you think that the earth is dominated by man. For a long time all the continents, cities, villages and almost every corner of nature have been subdued by a beast whose name is a rat, or just gray. Most of us hate them. And they do it right, because rats eat a huge part of the crop, mutilate pets and birds, reward us with deadly ailments. But on the other hand, in the laboratories they give their lives in thousands, helping us to deal with diseases, including cancer and AIDS, try the toxins and new drugs, "work" on the secrets of genetics and psychology. Do you know how the rat lives? How does one look for a couple? How does the offspring grow? Why does he live next to a person? We will tell you about rats all the fun.

Where did they come from?

12 thousand years ago gray rats lived only in East Asia. The ice age left them a small space, where East China is now. With the warming of the rat, the pasyuk gradually took Altai, Primorye, Transbaikalia and the south of China. But large-scale migrations have occurred with the development of navigation. It is on ships that the tailed animals migrated to Europe, Australia, Africa, America, populating all human settlements and suitable natural expanses. Now they are not present only in Antarctica and in the Arctic. As they arrived in new places on the ships, even a certain John Berkenhout, an English naturalist, dubbed the rats Norwegian, thinking that schooners and bots to England come from there, and not knowing that at that time there were no rats in Norway. Despite the error, the name of the species Rattus norvegicus exists to this day.

Rat Pasyuk: description

Among their relatives, these rodents are considered large. Males grow to a length of up to 25 cm, plus a 19 cm bald tail. In this case, the weight of an adult can be up to 400 grams. The size of females is slightly more modest. There are no other external differences. Muzzle of the pasyuk is often not very elongated, the ears are small. The wool of the rats is conventionally gray, but red, dark, brownish shades may be present, approximately as in agouti, why they are called brown abroad. Rarely, but there are Pasuks pure black and pure white. The abdomen of all is also white, and throughout the body there are long coarse hairs often dark at the base. There are two subspecies of pasyukov - Indian and East Asian. In rats, the chromosome set is 42 units, and the genes are 25,000, so that all combinations are possible.

Behavior

Gray rat pasyuk - a social beast, lives in groups in groups, loneliness is very rare. One family can occupy a territory of up to 2 square km, which it carefully marks and guards. But if necessary, called "food production", the boundaries of the territory easily expand. A family can have 100 to 2,000 members. Among male rats, like other mammals, there is a strict hierarchy, consisting in the selection of females for the extension of the genus. But there is no help and protection for each other. Rats are always for themselves. They are very smart, they have a good memory, if they are all right, they are not aggressive, but they are able to stand up for themselves. The rats fight well, not only with their relatives, but also with large animals. Earlier, English sisters even arranged spectacular rat-dog fights, which, fortunately, had already been banned.

Food

The rat is an omnivorous beast. In nature, her menu includes grains, vegetables, fruits and necessarily squirrels: eggs, chicks, fish, seafood (stolen or thrown to the ground), insects, small rodents, and sometimes even feces. Settling near a man, rats have changed their gourmet tastes. Now in their menu, any food leftovers, unattended products (especially grain in granaries), as well as wiring, books, other things people need. An interesting fact: in order to get a tidbit, a rat is able to squeeze into a hole where a relatively small head could climb through it. Pasyuki chose for themselves warehouses, cellars, metro, and in the houses freely travel through the sewer network and garbage chutes.

Reproduction

Simply fantastically prolific rat pasyuk! The above photo captures a 3-day brood. These caudate become sexually mature at 3 months old! Cubs in females can have up to 20 pieces in a litter. Often 3-4 mothers arrange a common nest to take care of the kids. Scientists have noticed that in such cubes the bodies of newborns are sometimes intertwined, and it seems that grown-up rats are two-three-headed. Perhaps it was the prototype of a rat king from the Nutcracker.

In nature, animals build nests in hollows or dig out shallow burrows. In cities they are arranged in any suitable place. The female, which has been freed from the burden, can conceive again in 18 hours, and the pregnancy lasts only 24 days. Can you imagine the progression of the rat population?

Newborn babies are real crumbs weighing up to 5 grams. They can eat a hungry papa, and sometimes a mother, if it seems that the children are too weak. But mostly females are rather caring, they lick their tailed children, feed them with very nutritious milk, put things in order in the nest. Up to 17 days, children remain blind, but already at the age of 1 month, and sometimes only 21 days old they begin an independent life. Now the rats on Earth are somewhere around 15-18 billion, almost twice as many as us people. And this despite the fact that the growth of their population is hampered by diseases, predators, people and too little life, not exceeding three years, even in the most ideal conditions.

Highscores

Rat can get surprised with its abilities. In danger, it jumps to a height of 80 cm, in length - up to 1 meter, accelerates to 10 km / h, can swim for 3 days in the water, and overland reels up to 17 km per day. These animals, you might say, are extreme. They can live and even multiply at -18 ° C. So, in one of the meat freezers were found rat nests with the kids in frozen carcasses. They calmly tolerate heat up to + 45 ° C, and even radiation up to 300 roentgen per hour. Wherever atomic explosions were conducted and all livestock was destroyed, only the rat Pasyuk remained unscathed. Their small ears can catch the smallest noise in the range of 40kHz. We catch only up to 20 kHz, which is perfectly used in ultrasonic repellents.

But the sight of the rats is rather weak. They have a viewing angle of only 16 °, so they often have to turn their heads. Of the flowers they distinguish only bluish-green, but mostly everyone sees in gray paints.

Each individual needs only 20 grams of food per day, but this is 10 kg per year. Without food, rats can only last 4 days. It was the search for food that led to their resettlement to new territories. No less need for pasyukam and water. If their menu is made up only of dry food, without drinking they can live only 5 days. If the feed contains at least 50% moisture, they stay without water for almost a month.

Harm and benefit

Rodents, living only in nature, people are annoyed little. All they can do is bite the vegetables in the garden or the corn in the fields. Much more unpleasant is the house rat. Here there are two varieties - those who live with a person constantly, and those who move to people only in the cold. Both of them are capable of completely destroying supplies of food, disconnecting the home and entire areas, cutting the wiring, paw poultry and rabbits, killing rabbits, chickens and other chicks. But the most terrible thing is that rats suffer a plague, typhus, a fever of Ku, salmonellosis, helminths and other infection. For all these reasons, with the people of Russia, people are constantly fighting, poisoning them with poisons, setting traps.

But on the other hand, it is the rats, due to their fantastic fecundity, are the main experimental animals on which they test medicines, conduct a lot of experiments, infect them with all kinds of diseases, and then find a cure for them. Therefore, despite the damage inflicted by the Pasukians, one must have respect for them.

Pets

It turns out that there are people who are engaged in rats with great pleasure and even save them from troubles. One of such communities of the rat fry is called Felis Lynx (rats). "What happened to the Pasyuk?" - this is one of the topics on their forums on the Internet. A community has been created, so that anyone who wishes to have a little rat in his house can help with advice, because raising a baby is not so easy. In the community there are people who grow exclusively domesticated animals that are more communicative, not aggressive at all, such small little lumps that require love and care. But there are people who are going to go out wild rats. To the captivity, the people also get used to it, with difficulty, but they tame, respond to the name, they can even let them play with them. But for example, males are more difficult to tolerate the appearance of a stranger in their cage, they can even bite it, at first they hardly withstand cleaning the cages or bowls of food.

Selection

The great fecundity of rats helps to bring out their numerous breeds. In general, they differ in color of eyes and fur. There are even rats-sphinxes (bald), rats down (with a gentle fluff instead of wool) and double-reks (these are all parts of the life on the body that are covered with fur). A hybrid of a pasyuk and an ornamental rat, which has lost some of its former talents, can also be obtained. This is done in the project "Home Pasyuk." Children from such an alliance are born not only in a variety of colors, but also stronger, more intelligent. True, sometimes this offspring comes out somewhat aggressive. In general, it's very interesting to mess with rats. The animals are affectionate, clean, they eat little, they train and occupy very little space in the apartment.