Rats are the backbone of the Rodent family, and along with that, clever, social animals as well. Rats operate like any other mammal in the wild, but they do have some very interesting attributes not found in any other animal except the rat. There are many different types of rat including the black rat and Norway Rats (more commonly known as brown rats). These two species’ are very similar in their way of living, just from different continents. In this essay, I will be talking about the scientific classification, physical description, habitat, interspecies relations, adaptations, and life cycles of the widely recognized rat.
First, I will be talking about the scientific classifications of the rat. The word rat derived from the Latin word Rattus, meaning “household pest”. The Rattus genus is a rodent that’s natural length gets up to 5 inches in length. Rats tend to live in naturally warm and temperate areas like in Asia, where the black rat is originally from. There has been a rodent fossil found in an oil reserve in 2010, which totaled up to 10 feet long. Urban rats tend to eat food leftover from human trash predominantly found in urban areas such as India or New York. Wild rats, however, tend to have Omnivorous diets, though preferring meat.
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Rats are rodents with long, defined, prolonged heads, with rounded black eyes. They tend to have sharp claws good for snatching things up; this is along with them being generally tall in height, ranging from 5 to even 12 inches, depending on their diet. Did you know that you can actually tell how big a rat is by just looking at its footprint? The fur length and texture vary between the species, along with tail length and hair amount. Rat teeth actually grow 4 inches per