Talk:Black rat

Fancy Black Rats?

What are the difference between brown and black rat for fancy? Out of better availability, is there some reason to favour brown rats? What are strenght and weaknesses of the black rat compared to the brown rat, when considered as a pet? Reply to David Latapie 18:55, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Black rats are an arboreal species, so even when bred for tameness, they are going to be naturally better at climbing and jumping than Norway rats. Therefore, most people find them harder to handle than Norway rats. Especially babies, which are easier to startle than adults that have gotten used to being handled. And can be very good at escaping and avoiding recapture. They won't make very good pets for people that aren't experienced handling them and don't have rat safe play areas. Selective breeding can make them calmer and friendlier, but they will still be arboreal rats and therefore always harder to handle than Norway rats. They also don't form stable social stable social hierarchies as well as Norway rats, and longtime cage-mates may still fight with each other (especially males) , and some Roof Rats may totally reject same sex cage mates, which may be surprising to people used to Norway rat behavior. Norway rats generally come in more colors than Roof Rats, which are only available in Black, Agouti and Amber (here's a litter with Amber and Agouti roof rats.) Brianjstarr (talk) 20:22, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

- Brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) has been bred for docility mainly for laboratory purposes for thousands of generations and this is where the pet and fancy rats come from. Ship rats on the other hand, have never been selectively bred for handling and are therefore basically wild and untameable, and make terrible pets. Ship rats have several coat colours in the wild, one of which is black, hence the name. In New Zealand, most, in fact, are not black 203.160.125.99 08:46, 22 June 2007 (UTC) John Innes, Landcare Research

Black Rat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.52.31.65 (talk) 20:57, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I know this is a kind of a question unlikely to be answered, but wth is that rat eating in the first picture? The whole scene is strikingly ghastly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.105.113.46 (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

• Ghastly? It's a rat sitting on a carpet next to a table chair, eating what looks like a piece of carrot. (Caption says "black rat at London Zoo", but does the zoo really have a dining room as the rat habitat?) The black rats I see here in Los Angeles are never this black. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.234.224.230 (talk) 07:21, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Unclear

"Despite the black rats tendency to displace native species, it can also aid in increasing species population numbers and maintaining species diversity. The bush rat, a common vector for spore dispersal of mycorrhiza commonly known as truffles, has been extirpated from many micro-habitats of Australia. In the absence of a vector for spore dispersal of these truffles, the diversity of truffle species will decline. In a study conducted by Vernes et. al in New South Wales, Australia it was found that although the bush rat consumes a diversity of truffle species, the black rat consumes as much of the diverse fungi as the natives and is an effective vector for spore dispersal. Since the black rat now occupies the many of the micro-habitats that were previously inhabited by the bush rat, the black rat plays an important ecological role in the dispersal of fungal spores. By eradicating the black rat populations in Australia, the diversity of fungi would decline, potentially doing more harm than good."

Looks like OR, and illogical OR at that? Eradicating the BR would return to the status quo, and once the bush rat was re-established the diversity would be unchanged. (I am assuming that the BR displaced the bush rat here.) Rich Farmbrough, 22:12, 25 April 2011 (UTC).

Extinct in Sweden

The map File:Black rat distribution.png

is gravely erroneous. It seems to be based on another file of the Brown Rat distribution. Use this file File:Black rat range map.png, instead

(I fixed it!) Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 16:54, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Distribution

It would be useful to include the distribution of the black rat in South America. In Chile the rat was introduced in 1540 and has become widely distributed and abundant according to Simonetti. --DegupediaDE (talk) 08:50, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Insight

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aavikko.png

176.24.253.164 (talk) 13:37, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Giant gerbil as origin of the Plague

Revising the sentence "However, a recent study points to the giant gerbil as the source of the plague rather than the rat." This sentence misstates the conclusions of the study, and implies that gerbils were a significant plague vector in Europe, despite the fact that they were unknown in Europe until after the last plague outbreaks. What the study actually says is that gerbils and other central Asian rodents other than the black rat served as plague reservoirs between outbreaks; that there may have been no rodent plague reservoirs in medieval Europe, but that fresh outbreaks may have resulted from a combination of maritime introductions (certainly involving rats) as well as overland introduction via land trade routes (not involving rats, but humans, and perhaps camels, at least in Asia); and that to the extent that plague persisted in parts of Europe without clear exposure to new sources of plague via trade contacts, it may have been spread from rural to urban populations among humans. The study does not deny that rats were a potential vector in the introduction of the plague in maritime ports, nor that they would have been an effective vector in many parts of Europe once introduced. Rather, it seeks explanations for the introduction of plague in regions where rats had not yet penetrated, and explores the potential overland transmission of plague through infected persons and animals other than rats. Nowhere does it suggest that the presence of gerbils or other Asiatic rodents was directly responsible for the introduction or spread of plague in medieval Europe. P Aculeius (talk) 12:42, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Botswana

Is there any explanation as to why Botswana is seemingly empty of Black Rats? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.16.93.72 (talk) 10:40, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

European plagues – vague wording, source needed

According to epidemiological models, Yersinia pestis originated outside of Europe, which indicates that Western and central Europe have never had any natural rodent plagues.

This statement needs some clarification, for instance: how does one rule out other species as potential sources of "natural rodent plagues" in those parts of Europe? What does "natural" mean in this context? Is there a published source supporting this statement? —Coconutporkpie (talk) 21:07, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Inconsistent sentence

"They are generalists, and thus not very specific in their food preferences, which is indicated by their tendency to feed on any meal provided for cows, swine, chickens, cats, and dogs.[11] They are similar to the tree squirrel in their preference of fruits and nuts." Well, which is it? Do they have no preference, or do they prefer fruit and nuts? Dpm12 (talk) 07:33, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

FYI, Amber colored Roof Rats with confirmed Rab 38 mutation

Minori Kido, a graduate student of Takashi Kuramoto, a Professor in the Laboratory of Animal Nutrition, Department of Animal Science Faculty of Agriculture, Tokyo University of Agriculture, gave a presentation at the Japanese Society of Zoology last week about my amber colored roof rats.

After doing PCR testing, they have confirmed that the rats have a recessive Rab 38 mutation, which is what gives them their amber hair color, as well as light skin tone and very dark ruby colored eyes (hard to see in photographs.) They sent me a copy of the presentation, which is in Japanese, but I'm not sure where the presentation is online. In any case, here is a nice video with same examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4XJYlWeLzo

Hopefully, at some point, the Wikipedia page for Black Rats will be updated to show that amber colored rats of that species do exist. :-) Brianjstarr (talk) 20:38, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

"Green Colored" Rattus rattus in 1920s England were Rab38 knockout Black Rats

I've out-crossed a blonde colored Rab38 knockout agouti base Rattus rattus with a black colored Rattus rattus. The resulting litter was a mix of agouti and black rats (because Rab38 knockout is recessive and black is dominant.)

I then inbred the resulting siblings, and got a mix of agouti, black and blonde offspring. However, at least one of the blonde babies had a greyish or greenish tint, depending on the lighting and the angle you viewed her fur. Some black pigment was still being produced and deposited in the hair shafts. See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAzxJQS8A1A

I suspect that the "green colored" Rattus rattus that were bred for show in 1920s England were the common (in Europe) "Black Rats" with a Rab38 Knockout mutation, like mine. Just like "Blue" Norway Rats don't actually have any blue pigment, "Green" Rattus rattus weren't actually green, but the scattered black pigment granules in blonde hair shafts made them appear Greenish (perhaps with a bit of embellishment by their proud owners.) Brianjstarr (talk) 03:00, 17 October 2024 (UTC)