Abstract
IN NATURE of September 19, 1918 (vol. cii., p. 53) a summary is given of an article by Prof. P. Chavigny on the food of rats. Some of the statements in this article appear to me to be extraordinary, particularly the alleged necessity for rats to get cooked human food. The hordes of rats which swarm along our foreshores, and in granaries and like places, could not possibly get sufficient cooked human food to keep them alive, yet they are plump and well-fed. Anyone who has kept fowls or ducks in a rat-infested place knows that rats will carry off and devour chicks and ducklings, even dragging them from under the brooding mother, eating them raw. Attacks on living and dead human beings and smaller animals are by no means rare. Along the water-front rats freely catch and cat crabs, and they will devour raw fish with avidity.
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STEEL, T. The Food of Rats. Nature 103, 345–346 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/103345a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/103345a0
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