The rodents, twice the size of common types, are plaguing an estate in Bradford, West Yorks, often appearing in kitchens and lounges.
It is feared some could be "super rats" from South America.
Pictured above is a monster 2½ft rat killed on the estate.
... "At night you can hear them chasing each other in the loft. They sound like drag racing cars as they screech across the rafters."
Last night experts called the shot rat "extraordinary" and said the colony was worth investigating.
Laura Drake, of the Mammal Society, speculated it could be a coypu - a South American rodent often referred to as a "giant rat".
Coypus were thought to have been eradicated in Britain in a cull 20 years ago. But Laura said it was "not impossible" there had been survivors.
Yorkshire Rat Club president Colin Arundel said rodents, like humans, could simply be getting bigger as food becomes more and more available.
The RSPCA said: "The most likely answer is the shot rat was from a non-indigenous species that was in captivity and got out."
via Invasion of the giant rats in Bradford | The Sun |News.
This is like that giant snake photo. The way it is photographed makes it look bigger than it is.
2 comments:
I don't know: The UK Daily Mail [Aug 20th, "The Beast of Bradford: Are monster rodents stalking the streets (or do you smell a rat?)"] talks about rats the size of cats.
The article says, "The rats scientists came across weighed 3lb, about five times as much as a typical city rat. They were 2ft long - not including its tail - and showed no fear of humans." The coypu, on the other hand, is also a large rodent that also grows up to 2ft long but weighs 20lbs and is vegetarian.
These urban rats just might be depicted in a broadcast of "Animal Kingdom," and photographed for a foldout in National Geographic as the animals of the future, given how well we've exterminated so many other species through habitat destruction, pollution, pesticides and the like, while sloughing off so much waste and leftovers for the monsters to thrive on.
Oh, what a lovely photo (with a color lens?), yellow teeth, incisor gap, red possum eyes!
But, there's no problem here. The guy is as happy as he can be, not insecure at all. Actually, the photo speaks a thousand words. Nice.
If he were holding a live 2 ft rat, he might just represent our future hero-hunter with a trophy catch after an urban safari.
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