Who's a Rat? The Unexpected Secrets You Must Hear - Away State Journal
Rat, the term generally and indiscriminately applied to numerous members of several rodent families having bodies longer than about 12 cm, or 5 inches. (Smaller thin-tailed rodents are just as often indiscriminately referred to as mice.)
Rodents are a diverse group of small to medium-sized mammals characterized by a single pair of constantly growing incisors in both the upper and lower jaws. They typically have robust bodies, short limbs, and long tails. As members of the order Rodentia, they constitute about 40% of all mammalian species, including some well-known animals like mice, rats, squirrels, prairie dogs, porcupines ...
Some rodents that we call “rats” are not true members of Rattus, including the pack rat, naked mole rat, and giant pouched rat.
The term “rat” encompasses several species within the family Muridae, the largest family of mammals. The most familiar species is the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), also known as the Norway rat, and the black rat (Rattus rattus), often called the roof rat.
With nearly 60 species of rat discovered so far, these rodents come in all sizes. They are typically 5 inches (12 centimeters), or longer, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
The term rat applies to any of 56 thin-tailed, medium-sized rodent species in the genus Rattus that are native to continental Asia, the islands of Southeast Asia eastward and the Australia-New ...
