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Do rats jump?

In one of the most peculiar and most outstanding complaints about how far the rats had encroached on human territory, one writer notes that these creature chew through our insulation, they invade our homes, they eat our food and go on to spread diseases that threatens mankind. Yet of all this thing s they continue to outsmart man at every turn. He seems to have been right – at that time and as at now, compounded by fact and evidence. Rats have been known to swim – and not just the petty swimming that one would imagine of these rodents waggling their lengthy tails on the surface of basin water – but a case where they can migrate from one island to another more than half a kilometer away. They can as well swim from one corner of the city sewer system and pop up in your toilet to your own shock, but of all these things – rats can and do jump. Here are the facts.



Let’s start with the other fearful breed that does not love to jump as such, the brown rat. This type has been shown to display tendencies of negative geotaxis, where they fear motion up against gravity, and they would rather, in most cases, move downwards than upwards. They mostly love to crawl right on horizontal grounds, except when they are forced to descend. Rarely do they enjoy climbing up objects. They don’t seem to love it at all. But when it comes to black rats and majority of the remaining rat family, jumping is more a hobby than a task, and they would excel if they were to take part in competitions.

Rats can jump vertically to as high as 77 centimeters, a distance good enough for them to leap some ground obstacles on their way and get to where they want to go. Their hind legs are a powerful spring board that allows them to launch their bodies vertically into the air, while their tails help them to maintain the balance and steady the ship while in mid-air. But there is this other aspect of vertical height that is much more appalling about these creatures than their mere jumping capabilities and it is none other than the vertical free fall. Rats have been indicated to fall from heights as high as forty feet to the ground without a single injury! I guess this is astonishing if not surprising.

Their ability to fall from such great heights with their bodies in shape and form makes them an adaptable breed when it comes to visiting your house from the roof. If you have some tree with hanging branches then you should not wonder how rats got in, they are good climbers too! Read more: Rat Control, Get Rats Out of the Attic, Rat Trapping, Rats in the Ceiling, Rat Feces.


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