Pest Control Staten Island Mice Rats Rodents

House mouse, (Mus musculus), rodent native to Eurasia but introduced worldwide through association with humans. Highly adaptive, the house mouse has both behavioral and physiological traits—such as the ability to survive in buildings and aboard ships, a tendency to move into agricultural fields and leave when the habitat changes, and a rapid rate of reproduction—that allow it to thrive wherever humans do.

The house mouse has thin whiskers, narrow hind feet, and short, sharp claws; its long, slender, scantily haired tail and prominent, thinly furred ears appear naked, but on the rest of the body the fur is short and soft. Domesticated laboratory strains may be white (true albinos), black, patterned with black and white, or blond, whereas native populations have tawny-brown upperparts and white bellies with shorter, bicoloured tails. Introduced feral populations, on the other hand, have dark, grayish brown upperparts paling to gray on the sides; underparts are similar to the sides and sometimes tinged with buff, and the tail is uniformly dark gray. The animal has a distinctive strong, musky odour. Generally weighing 12 to 30 grams (0.4 to 1.1 ounces), the house mouse has a small, slender body 6 to 11 cm (2.4 to 4.3 inches) long, and its tail length equals its body length. All these dimensions, however, can vary among different populations around the world.

Rat, (genus Rattus), the term generally and indiscriminately applied to numerous members of several rodent families having bodies longer than about 12 cm, or 5 inches. (Smaller thin-tailed rodents are just as often indiscriminately referred to as mice.) In scientific usage, rat applies to any of 56 thin-tailed, medium-sized rodent species in the genus Rattus native to continental Asia and the adjacent islands of Southeast Asia eastward to the Australia-New Guinea region. A few species have spread far beyond their native range in close association with people. The brown rat, Rattus norvegicus (also called the Norway rat), and the house rat, R. rattus (also called the black rat, ship rat, or roof rat), live virtually everywhere that human populations have settled; the house rat is predominant in warmer climates, and the brown rat dominates in temperate regions, especially urban areas. Most likely originating in Asia, the brown rat reached Europe in the mid-1500s and North America around 1750. The house rat most likely originated in India.

Europe’s rising rat populations: Causes, effects, and solutions

Overview of leptospirosis, including a discussion of rats, which can spread the disease.(more)

See all videos for this article

Brown and house rats exploit human food resources, eating and contaminating stored grains and killing poultry. They have been responsible for the depletion or extinction of native species of small mammals, birds, and reptiles, especially on oceanic islands. Both the brown and house rat have been implicated in the spread of 40 diseases among humans, including bubonic plague, food poisoning, schistosomiasis, murine typhus, tularemia, and leptospirosis. On the other hand, the brown rat has been used in laboratories worldwide for medical, genetic, and basic biological research aimed at maintaining and improving human health. Rats are also kept as pets.

Rodent, (order Rodentia), any of more than 2,050 living species of mammals characterized by upper and lower pairs of ever-growing rootless incisor teeth. Rodents are the largest group of mammals, constituting almost half the class Mammalia’s approximately 4,660 species. They are indigenous to every land area except Antarctica, New Zealand, and a few Arctic and other oceanic islands, although some species have been introduced even to those places through their association with humans.