LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Rats: Food
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Rats are scavenger animals that tend to rely on their senses. Smell, taste, touch and sound help direct them to their food sources. They are clever rodents that can dig three feet straight into the ground. Rats have strong teeth that allow them to chew through glass, cinderblock, wire, aluminum and lead. They can climb into pipes with diameters between one-half and four inches.
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Kangaroo Rats primary food is seeds -- mesquite, creosote bush, purslane, ocotillo, and grama grass have been found in their cheek pouches. Some species ... eat grasses, succulents, other green vegetation and insects.
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Rats, like all mammals, are edible by humans and are sometimes captured and eaten in emergency situations. For some cultures, rats are considered a staple. Bandicoot rats are an important food source among some peoples in India and Southeast Asia. Among the reasons rat meat is not more widely utilized are the strong prohibitions against it in Islamic and Jewish dietary laws, the prohibition of all meat by many followers in Hinduism, and the rat's bad reputation in many cultures.
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Rats are clever, they're tough and very capable. And they breed all year around. Young rats reach sexual maturity at three months. A female rat will have as many as five litters a year, with up to 10 pups per litter, or more. This can mean frightening population growth. Local populations tend to swell along with the available food supply, and as the crops mature, swarms of rats appear to overwhelm the harvest.
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Rats are dangerous! They can ruin your food, destroy things in your home and start electrical fires. Rats and their fleas can carry disease. If you have any questions and you reside in or the property in question is in King County, feel free to call the Public Health Environmental Health Office at (206) 205-4394.
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Medical importance: Rats can spread disease. Sometimes they transmit disease directly by contaminating food with their urine or feces or by biting people. Sometimes they transmit disease indirectly, as when fleas bite a disease-infected rat, then a person. Some of the important diseases associated with commensal rats are: Plague (not currently a problem in the NE USA), Rat-Bite Fever (a seldom serious bacterial infection that occurs occasionally after being bitten by a rat.), Salmonella Food Poisoning (a problem where rats have access to human food sources), and Leptospirosis (another disease that is spread to humans through contaminated food, water, and through cuts in the skin).
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