RODENT MANAGEMENT

What do rats think about?

You often navigate through your clients’ facilities “thinking” like this pest or that pest while making situational assessments. But perhaps to know how to “think” like a pest, you need to know what a pest is “thinking” about.

A rat, for example, is thinking a lot about food. It thinks about how to obtain food at perhaps a “disgusting dumpster du jour” and escape being a “rat du jour.” If you are hungry, you forage the cupboards, pantry, refrigerator, grocery store, or a restaurant menu. For a rat, it is not quite so convenient.

PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS
An adult rat has a high surface area-to-body volume ratio, which means a rat has a very high metabolism (MBR 1.4W) and loses body heat rapidly. To maintain a body temperature of 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit and about 110 calories a day, a rat spends more than 40 percent of its time moving, foraging, exploring, drinking and eating. Preferring crepuscular activity, which means most active at twilight, a rat will readily change foraging behavior to exploit changing food sources.

• SMELL — A rat thinks about smelling extremely faint odors, and even food molecules. It’s working overtime to sense food or predators by scent. Rat olfaction, or super-smelling sense, can discriminate micro-odors from urine, scats and exocrine secretions, which can determine rat gender, maturation, reproductive characteristics, social ranking and colonial familiarity.

• HEARING — A rat thinks about hearing extremely faint sounds with its directional pinnae, or ears. Hearing to sense sounds into the ultrasonic for communication, audibly avoid hazards, and get to and from a food source while avoiding a predator. A rat’s hearing is sensitive up to 100 kilohertz, compared to a human's which is up to just 20 kilohertz on average.

• SIGHT — A rat thinks about seeing motion and reflective objects, to stay in the shadows and avoid obscure hazards. Rat ocular acuity, or vision, detects motion at about 30 feet. Its vision is at about 20/600, which means it sees something 20 feet away in the way that a human with 20/20 vision would see at 600 feet away.

• MOTION — A rat thinks about moving agilely and safely by walking on its paws at about 0.5 mph or running on its toes at about 8 mph. These options allow it to travel safely to and from a food source and avoid predators. A knowledgeable rat expert, which all pest management professionals (PMPs) should aspire to be, should be able to determine rat gender, maturation, body size, fitness and behavioral characteristics just from a rat’s ambulation, or movement.

• TOUCH — A rat thinks about touching structural guidelines, corners and holes, and even feeling ground vibration. It uses touch to sense and stay in contact with surfaces to safely forage, locate, and get to and from food sources and avoiding predators. A rat’s kinesthetic sense, or muscle memory, develops from using tactile or innervated vibrissae (whiskers and body hairs).

• TASTE — A rat thinks about tasting food before ingesting it. Its gustatory sense, or taste, is sensitive down to parts per million. This helps the rat to determine food palatability or toxicity, the latter of which results in rejection and avoidance.

Think about this: Controlling food availability can control rat presence. And that is something for a rat to think about. So, as a PMP, what should you think about? You should think about no food, no rats!