via ananova.com
I may have written lovingly about pet rats recently... but I am not sure I want these Giant Rats to catch on as pets! At 1.4 kg, they are FIVE times the size of "normal" rats.. which is a whole lot of rat. Bet someone decides we need these and tries to smuggle them around the world...yes, I watch "Border Control" on TV occasionally. The man quoted : "The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat," said Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. "With no fear of humans, it apparently came into the camp several times during the trip."
I did wonder about posting this picture the first time I saw, um, (perhaps encountered is a better word) it, but decided not to. However, today, I read about a rat attack here in New Zealand:
" I felt something jump on to my bed and I thought it was the cat"... well you would really - probably wouldn't occur to me it could be anything else!!!
Apparently, when it was near her neck, she extended a hand to give it a pat. The startled rodent then latched onto her upper lip.
After hearing his wife screaming, her husband turned on the light to see a rat, which relinquished its grip and took off into the couple's bathroom. He said, "It was about nine inches long, very round and cuddly ... well, violent, actually,"
I am not kidding - you can read more at :
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2894959/Water-rat-attacks-woman-in-bed
I found myself hoping that this was nothing to do with the type of rat in this picture! Still, I don't know which is worse - that a new species of giant rat might arrive here, or that our local NZ water rats have achieved this sort of reputation already? Either way, I can feel the hairs on my arms rising at the prospect of encountering any very large wild one, at night, in bed.
