Word: rattus
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...only species of rat (of the four-legged variety, anyway) that lives in New York City is the Rattus norvegicus, also known as the Norway rat or the brown rat. Nobody knows exactly how many live here, but everyone agrees that the population has exploded in recent years - thanks to warmer winters, ever more wasteful food habits and, in part, the city's crippling fiscal problems in the 1970s...
...Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus), which pervades Boston and most American urban areas, is a formidable creature. It has gnawing teeth and jaw muscles that bite with the force of 12 tons per inch -- on a par with a shark. It will eat almost anything, and has been known to attack human babies. Some of the Boston rats have lived their entire lives underground, and no one knows how they will behave when exposed to the cultural opportunities of aboveground Boston...
...length, that once had the run of the Indian countryside. To the dismay of the Indian Parliament, these are hard times for the dhaman, as well as for the more than 20 other varieties of Indian herpetofauna that prey on, among other things, the domestic brown rat, known as Rattus rattus. Thanks in part to commerce, which values the hide of a snake more than that of a rat, the rodents have been winning the battle against their deadliest enemy. Two weeks ago, India's legislators decided it was time to redress the balance. They choked off the nation...
...small doses, it does not harm large animals. But when a rat swallowed it, it caused internal bleeding and death, usually within five days. For about 25 years, man felt he had the rat on the run. No more. British health authorities have discovered that brown "house" rats (Rattus norvegicus) in Wales and black "ship" rats (Rattus rattus) on Liverpool's docks now eat warfarin as casually as if it were an appetizer. Clearly a new immune strain has developed-the super...
Across the Volga. According to Lockard, several factors disqualify the rat as an experimental animal. The first is that the laboratory rat, originally Rattus norvegicus and an indigene of Asia, crossed the Volga River into Europe only 250 years ago. On history's ample scale, it is a newcomer; its rapid diffusion, combined with rapid breeding, makes of the Norway rat an animal that is still in violent evolutionary motion. To arrest it, as in the laboratory, says Lockard, is to claim validity for a motion-picture still...