Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Rat
So-called super-rats are proving difficult to kill with standard poisons. Photograph: Alamy
So-called super-rats are proving difficult to kill with standard poisons. Photograph: Alamy

Why you don't need to worry about giant, invincible man-eating super-rats

This article is more than 9 years old
A plague of invincible giant super-rats is reported to be taking over Liverpool. They won't ever eat people, will they?

Name: The super-rat.

Age: As old as rats.

Appearance: Take a wild guess.

Like a rat? Congratulations.

And what are its super-powers? It doesn't have super-powers as such, but – and I don't mean to alarm you here – there are reports that a plague of invincible giant super-rats is taking over Liverpool.

Argh! You have alarmed me! They're larger than average, apparently, and are proving difficult to kill with standard poisons, such as warfarin and bromadiolone.

A giant rat caught in Liverpool.
A giant rat discovered in Highgate, London.

Help! Help! They won't ever eat people, will they? Well, rats used to eat corpses in no-man's land during the first world war.

But they won't grow really huge, right? They're rodents, and rodents are always furry little nibblers? Well, they are generally furry, because they are mammals. And yes, rodents are defined by their pair of constantly-growing sharp front teeth, which means they need to nibble things constantly to keep them ground down. They are not always little, however.

What? The largest living rodent is the South American capybara, which is about the size of a sheep. If left alone on an island, a recent study suggests that rats could easily evolve to become that big.

Eek! And in the past some rodents have been even larger. The extinct Josephoartigasia monesi probably weighed about a tonne.

Help! I'm going to hide in a cupboard! OK, but before you do that you might want a bit more detail. The truth is that only a few "super-rats" are larger than normal, and that they usually can be killed conventionally, it just takes more poison to do it. Also, when I say "taking over Liverpool", I mean that the city has reported a 15% rise in call-outs during the last year, which may simply be the result of rat populations becoming more visible as they escaped the floods.

Oh. People just tend to get a bit excited about big rats, you see. There was a whopper found in Sweden recently, and a few in Iran, both of which made headlines in UK newspapers.

So perhaps the super-rat's super power is the ability to attract lots of media attention? Perhaps so.

Like Myleene Klass, if she lived in a burrow and gnawed things constantly. Now there's a terrifying image.

Do say: "Some are nearly as big as small cats!"

Don't say: "Yes, but small cats aren't scary."

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed