This  level-4 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Mammals High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mammals, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mammal-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MammalsWikipedia:WikiProject MammalsTemplate:WikiProject Mammalsmammal High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Rodents Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Rodents, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of rodents on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.RodentsWikipedia:WikiProject RodentsTemplate:WikiProject RodentsRodent Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. WikiProject Rodents to-do list: Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Drafts Cleanup : Beaver dam • Bolivian hemorrhagic fever • Campbell's dwarf hamster • Fancy mouse • Golden hamster • Guinea pig breed Expand : Bolivian hemorrhagic fever • Least chipmunk (requested) • California ground squirrel (requested) • Lemming (requested) Merge : List of literary accounts of the Pied Piper • Mousetrap NPOV : Birbalomys • Gambian pouched rat • Golden hamster • Hamster ball • Mountain Beaver • Pacarana • Plague (disease) • Prairie dog • Rat-catcher • Syrian hamster variations • The Rats (novel) • Tree squirrel Stubs : Rodent stubs Update : Baird's pocket gopher • Beaver • Black squirrel • Chinchilla • Cypriot mouse • Eurasian beaver • House mouse • Rabies Verify : Acouchi • Aethomys • Ailuravus • Allegheny woodrat • American red squirrel • Anatole (mouse) • Anomalomyidae • Apodemus • Arctic ground squirrel • Argentine hemorrhagic fever • Armintomys • Batomys • Beaver • Beaver dam • Black-tailed prairie dog • Blesmol • Bobak marmot • Eligmodontia • Guinea pig • Mountain beaver • North American beaver • Tokudaia Wikify : Baird's pocket gopher • Golden hamster • Indian giant flying squirrel Other : photo requests Europe Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Europe, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to European topics of a cross-border nature on Wikipedia.EuropeWikipedia:WikiProject EuropeTemplate:WikiProject EuropeEurope Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Asia Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Asia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Asia on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AsiaWikipedia:WikiProject AsiaTemplate:WikiProject AsiaAsia Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Africa High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Africa on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject AfricaTemplate:WikiProject AfricaAfrica High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Australia Low‑importance Rat is within the scope of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.AustraliaWikipedia:WikiProject AustraliaTemplate:WikiProject AustraliaAustralia Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Need help improving this article? Ask a LibrarianWhat's this? at the National Library of Australia. The Wikimedia Australia chapter can be contacted via email to helpwikimedia.org.au for non-editorial assistance. Americas (inactive) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Americas, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.AmericasWikipedia:WikiProject AmericasTemplate:WikiProject AmericasAmericas

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Shawnbrookins. Peer reviewers: Adriennescarcella.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 October 2018 and 12 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Leparra.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi folks, I'm pretty sure the photo "a rat in a suburb of Vancouver" is actually a mouse... 66.30.119.30 (talk) 15:44, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pam started the black pague. Recent evidence suggests that the contribution of the rat to the plague has been overestimated. Instead, waves of plague-carrying-fleas arrived from Asia on gerbils. I would suggest updating the text in the article to reflect the new potentially diminished role of the rat in that epidemic. ^[1] Jerlich (talk) 11:26, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Seventy-seven species of mammals carry the plague, but it is primarily a disease of wild rodents like gerbils, rats and Pamela. Rats have been the biggest problem globally because they are ubiquitous in large cities around the world. I suppose that in Kazakhstan wild gerbils and Pam might be a bigger plague carrier, but that's in Asia, not Europe. In the US, prairie dogs sometimes get it, but it kills them so fast they don't get much chance to transmit it to people. Here in Alberta we have killed every single wild rat, no exceptions, the coyotes keep the prairie dogs severely reduced, and there aren't many wild gerbils roaming the Canadian prairies, so we don't have any plague vectors.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 18:03, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Rat. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090221223502/http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com:80/Heads_and_Tales/Rat_meat_to_be_commercialised_in_Bihar/articleshow/3351440.cms to http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Heads_and_Tales/Rat_meat_to_be_commercialised_in_Bihar/articleshow/3351440.cms

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers. —^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 13:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

this may seem a bit obvious, but why no section on the diet of rats, we have over 600 words on rats as food but nothing on rat food, just wondering.Coolabahapple (talk) 06:56, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I looked through your article and everything looked really good. there was some stuff that i never knew about rats that was written in that webpage. But i do not see a reproductive time or process paragraph, i think that could be a helpful paragraph to add in there simply because you talk about rats as pets. I also think a good section would be to talk about their life span and vet visits and how much these animals cost or even if you can buy these from places. but overall i like everything you wrote about about Rats. Here is a website you can get some information from about rats reproduction.(Andreabrisby (talk) 17:51, 19 November 2016 (UTC))[reply]

http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=18+1804&aid=889. Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).

I see no mention of the typical size or size range of the common rat (as opposed to weight). 94.30.84.71 (talk) 20:12, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have visited the Rat page in the past, and today, it's just weird seeing a section on dissecting rat tails. Not to mention the graphic images of the process itself. Rat tail dissection seems to me as being a highly specialized subject that either belongs on it's own article or on a biology portal. 70.64.103.181 (talk) 02:28, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to agree here; the section is arguably too specialized for most readers and is given an odd priority in the layout of the article as well. I'd like to propose adding a template message for the section in case anyone else wants to weigh in, but I think it might be best to give this section its own article, particularly where it appears to apply to all Muroid tails. 64.231.94.29 (talk) 15:52, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is a split-tag on the article, but no discussion here, so I'll start one.

• Support as unwieldy in this article and better as a standalone--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 05:41, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support: Meets two criteria >60kb and a content split Wikipedia:Splitting#When_to_split No objections for 6 months so I'll do the split. I'll clean up the tiny sentence fragments as well. - MTWEmperor (talk • contribs) 21:56, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The article claims the group noun for rats is "A Mischief". The link for that is an archived link that I was unable to retrieve, but appears to be an Australian news public-interest piece either on rats or group names for animals based on the topic and what is evident on the archive notice page. Public-interest stories are not always well researched, so instead the authority or sources for said news piece should be found and referenced, or that failing, another source included.

As there is no governing body for collective noun assignment or use, the group name should not be stated authoritatively, but should be a list of collective nouns commonly used, indicating that groups of rats are sometimes referred to as a Colony, Pack, Plague, Swarm, Horde, or Mischief.^[1]

In a google book-search using the word rat with any of the above collective nouns (excluding 'pack' as it was returning too many book references to 'Rat-Pack' novels and biographies) the most common scientific term appears to be 'colony'^[2] and 'mischief' seldom appears as a collective noun for rats in any publication except for a children's book about rats.^[3]

On an unrelated note, why is the Rat entry on partial lock-down? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.113.82.171 (talk) 21:06, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Re your last question, I would guess that people occasionally choose to politically vandalise this article. That being said, I do think semi-protection is overused -- specifically, that it tends to remain in force for longer than strictly necessary. Per WP policy, semi-protection is not supposed to be a default, but in practice it often ends up becoming so. - Tenebris 66.11.171.90 (talk) 09:17, 7 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

112.134.4.180 (talk) 05:25, 29 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. DannyS712 (talk) 06:40, 29 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Move the quoted sentences from the section "As pests" to the section "In the spread of disease". "Rats have long been held up as the chief villain in the spread of the Bubonic Plague;[60] however, recent studies show that rats alone could not account for the rapid spread of the disease through Europe in the Middle Ages.[61] Still, the Center for Disease Control does list nearly a dozen diseases[62] directly linked to rats." - Tenebris 66.11.171.90 (talk) 09:12, 7 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think that rats are omnivores, both meat and plantation. --72.68.4.132 (talk) 09:55, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just like mice, rats can be either a domestic pet or a feral/wild animal. Just like a mouse, a rat can be domestic! Would you want to put that in the Rat Wikipedia Article Page? :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.68.4.132 (talk) 09:58, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

    Since I am an anonymous user, I cannot edit the "Rat" page. I see many "[citation needed]" templates, so please add citations. You can also add a template reminding that citations are needed. Thank you. 2601:205:4100:CB5B:80DE:E032:6B2F:D69C (talk) 17:58, 19 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I added the template to this page. IAmNitpicking (talk) 12:56, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the left-hand Languages list, please include a link to the Spanish Wikipedia article on rats. By the way, I notice that other major languages are also missing from the language list. Odd. Any idea what is going on here? 31.4.128.88 (talk) 21:43, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Those items are all connected on the more specific article Rattus. WikiData sadly doesn't make it easy to join on related articles. – Thjarkur (talk) 22:19, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)I looked at es.wiki (the only language I'm somewhat proficient in) and I couldn't find an article that corresponds to this one. The Spanish word rata is a redirect to es:Rattus (the genus), which corresponds to the en.wiki article Rattus and is properly linked from that article. There's also a disambiguation page on es.wiki that lists various species known as rata in Spanish, but that's not really a useful transwiki link from this article. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 22:20, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Eating live rat in China.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:37, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The former wererat article, now redirected to Rat#Fiction, suggested that small unsourced section I have ported over has this book as a source:

Hall, J. (2003). Half Human, Half Animal: Tales of Werewolves & Related Creatures. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse. ISBN 1-4107-5809-5.

It did not make that entirely clear, though, as it was missing in-line citation. So it would be great if someone out there could confirm or disconfirm that.

That article also had several more examples of wererats in role-playing games and fiction besides the three I have cited, but did not put references on them. If anyone was so inclined, it would be nice to include those (primary) sources here, too. Daranios (talk) 20:07, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Asia is a pretty big place. Can you be more specific; for example the Middle-East and Turkey can be regarded as Asia, as can Japan and most of present day Russia. Asia is also contiguous with Europe and Africa, so in terms of the biosphere, can you really say for sure that rats definitely originated in Asia rather than from somewhere in Afro-Eurasia? 2A00:23C5:C102:9E00:74CB:7CAE:D8F2:4274 (talk) 02:49, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Can pet rats and wild rats still breed with each other? 2A00:23C5:C102:9E00:74CB:7CAE:D8F2:4274 (talk) 02:55, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(Add a sentence to the end of one paragraph in the Fiction section.)

Some fictional works use rats as the main characters. Notable examples include the society created by O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and others include Doctor Rat, and Rizzo the Rat from The Muppets. Pixar's 2007 animated film Ratatouille is about a rat described by Roger Ebert as "earnest... lovable, determined, [and] gifted" who lives with a Parisian garbage-boy-turned-chef.[60] A rat called "Rat" is one of the main characters in the comic strip Pearls Before Swine. Iamxenon (talk) 16:11, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: Text was already in article NightWolf1223 (talk) 18:09, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be beneficial to add some more information in the "As Pests" section such as information from this article https://newrepublic.com/article/144392/america-verge-ratpocalypse where it is stated that "Rats breed like rabbits; as this alarming Rentokil graphic shows, two rats in an ideal environment can turn into 482 million rats over a period of three years." I think this gives interesting context on how fast rats can become a large pest problem. What are everyone else's thoughts?

On this page I discovered Chinese folklores for Rats' Wedding, as well as Russian folklore for rats bury a cat. -- Great Brightstar (talk)

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 February 2022 and 20 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jazzmk2000 (article contribs). I am think about adding a picture of the cross section of a rat tail that shows the blood vessels, tendon bundles, and the caudal canal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jazzmk2000 (talk • contribs) 21:05, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

lemme edit 205.167.55.219 (talk) 14:39, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To edit protected articles you need to create an account and edit for some time. --Mvqr (talk) 15:19, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Rattus is a delicacy in certain parts of the world and is a good source of protein. In addition, some places don’t have that much trouble handling these organisms because of how knowledgeable they are about them. Eramir64 (talk) 04:56, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Despite existing anatomical analogy in the inthrathoracic position of the heart itself, the murine model of the heart and its structures remains a valuable tool for studies of human cardiovascular conditions.[23]" - this sentence found in the article seems to be wrong.

1, probably the word unthrathoracic is a typo and should be intrathoracic;

2, while i am neither a native speaker of English, nor of Latin, and i also lack medical education, the quoted sentence translates for me roughly as saying: "despite the similarity ... the rat-heart can be used to study some aspects of the human heart" - clearly it should be not DESPITE but instead "because of". if i am wrong about this, then the sentence is poorly formed, because it is difficult to comprehend and then it needs to be reworded.

3,Also this sentence: "The third feature was that a clear understanding of how MEPs are distributed in each of the laryngeal muscles was helpful in understanding the effects of botulinum toxin injection" uses the term MEP which would be rather nice to know what it stands for eg.: either an inline explanation of the acronym, or a direct link. if this was a medical textbook, i would not object its use of jargon, but for a generic audience it would make sense to rephrase it slightly to make it more reader-frendly.

4,"Brown rats are often used as model organisms for scientific research. Since the publication of the rat genome sequence,[27]

[...] Much of the genome of Rattus norvegicus has been sequenced.[28] "

The quoted sentences seem to discuss the same topic but they also seem to partially contradict each other. Ergo either one of them is wrong/outdated (delete it);

or they only seem to discuss the exact same topic, but they arent, therefore there is no contradiction - in this case either/both needs rephrasing for clarity;

or they do discuss the same topic and they do contradict each-other but we are in no position to judge between them- in this case for gods sake put them next to each other instead of the beginning and the end of tha same paragraph and do acknowledge the contradiction and do reflect on it saying it is not yet decided by science, eg.: some sources say the genome is done sequenced while others say this is not all the sequencing to be done before it can be called complete.

2A01:799:21B:E300:14AE:7EC4:BFCF:9D60 (talk) 20:24, 3 October 2023 (UTC).[reply]

The redirect Epimys has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 14 § Epimys until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 19:15, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect Ringie has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 14 § Ringie until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 19:25, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect Rat feces has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 16 § Rat feces until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 02:34, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Readers unfamiliar with Canadian geography might wonder why Alberta is only defending the east. Similarly, what about a program to stop rats migrating north from the US? Given the notable case of Alberta, more could be said.

1. https://wildsafebc.com/species/rats/ Rats are not native to BC and were introduced via boat traffic in the mid-1800s. They tend to thrive only in urban areas where food is abundant or where winters are mild. However, rats have now expanded their range as far east as the Kootenays.

2. https://bcinvasives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/4_Sjodin_Bryson_Invasive_Rats.pdf - "rats invaded Haida Gwai in the 1700s" (citing Gaston 2008)

Humpster (talk) 16:35, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]