Comments on: Unbelievable Truths

By: cevon

cevon — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:58:51 +0000

I didn’t know that.

By: rat removal

rat removal — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 04:34:21 +0000

Pest control refers to the regulation or management of a species ie. rats, mice which are defined as a pest, and usually because it is seen to be detrimental to the ecology, a persons health or even to the economy.

By: NC Pest Control

NC Pest Control — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:03:59 +0000

I’ve experienced the flea factoid for myself. I didn’t realize that they had hard shells, though. Hard to tell when you squeeze them between your fingers.

By: bed bug pest control

bed bug pest control — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:17:53 +0000

a pair of breeding mice can have 3000 offspring a year- WOW I would never have guessed that and I work in pest control. some great facts here thanks.

By: Rosie

Rosie — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:04:08 +0000

Here in Pennsylvania we have been getting a lot of calls about bed bugs. It doesn’t make sense to say you don’t need pest control if you have bed bugs. That’s the only thing that will help get them out of your home. And by all means, don’t get a used mattress from someone you don’t know! It could be bed bug infested which would be the reason they are getting rid of that mattress.

By: pest control jacksonville

pest control jacksonville — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:37:51 +0000

I did not think a rat could could chew through glass, cyder block and metal. that’s insane.

By: Barry Phillips

Barry Phillips — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:10:04 +0000

We surveyed a domestic dwelling once following report of rats on site. Apart from a variety of evidece in this house of horrors (I’ll post the full story soon)
We discovered that the rats were coming up from a basement and into the kitchen. No great suprise there, until it was realised that the only way up was through a hole in the floor….
a CONCRETE Floor, A 3.5 inch thick CONCRETE floor!
It was also estimated that this happened over a 2 – 3 week period! There were a lot of rats so I presume team work was used.

Though I would be interested to see some data on normal timescales involved in a brown rat gnawing through various materials.

By: loke

loke — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:38:24 +0000

Andy,

any idea how we can obtain the full text of the cited academic paper?

By: Gerry Weitz

Gerry Weitz — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:56:33 +0000

Very nice read.

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:05:14 +0000

I’ve just been pondering over one of the facts – about rats gnawing through glass. I have seen plenty of examples of rats gnawing through wood, breeze blocks, lead, aluminium and if they are motivated they can certaily chew through milder forms of steel. I’d never come across an example with glass, so I thought I’d investigate.

There’s certainly nothing published about glass, but there is plenty about the other materials in this academic paper

This reminded me of something called ‘Mohs Scale of Hardness’ which is a scale going from 1 (talc) to 10 (diamond) where given the number for a material you will know it can cut or scratch any materials with a lower score. Pretty useful of you are drilling or cutting something – check out this link for more information:

This does make me wonder what they cut diamonds with?

That’s obviously not important here – what matters is that a rodent’s incisors represent the hardest known biological material at 5.5 on this scale. So you can see how they can gnaw through some materials, but not others like hardened steel – and glass is listed as 5.5 or 6 depending where you get the information. The hardness of glass probably depends on its particular composition and manufacture, but I’d say that this goes a long way to proving that rats can’t gnaw through glass – unless it is flawed in some way……

Possibly someone has seen some gnawed perspex or clear plastic and mistaken it for glass – or perhaps rats have been eating the glass they use in the movies for breaking windows – it’s made of sugar I believe and I think they would love that!

Andy