'Never seen anything like it': 'white' rats descend on Italian village

For a few days now the small village of Gattolino (which translates roughly as “little cat”) has been battling an infestation of rodents. Locals have nicknamed the newcomers “crazy white rats” because of their strange behaviour.

They have reportedly been jumping in front of cars and killing each other. One firefighter told a local paper: “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

The rats seem to have come from an old pigeon breeding enclosure – which closed last year – where they would find shelter and food.

“It is very likely that the rats have run out of food from inside the enclosures and once the food was finished they came out to find more in the countryside,” the local mayor told journalists.

'Never seen anything like it': 'white' rats descend on Italian village

I have never heard of a whole colony of white rats. Albino rats are lab rats as far as I know. They are breed to be white.

Looking at the video I found on YouTube it looks like they are not really white rats, at least not all of them. The video is in Italian.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Read up on Universe 25 and John B . Calhoun.

The behavior is exactly what overpopulation does to mice. They have a very precise social interaction processes and when not followed they stress out. If it goes on long enough then the whole society collapses.

Calhoun called it a “behavioral sink” and I screwed up the title to my thread and used “beautiful sink”!!

Maybe they got Toxoplasma gondii

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I did read that thread and thought it was very interesting. I didn't think of that when I made this thread.

I'm probably in the very tiniest of minorities when I say that the video was difficult for me to watch. I realize that most people in the US and many other country hate rats, but I like them and seeing so many dead in such a graphic display was gut-wrenching.

Rats and mice have very sophisticated social structures as mentioned above, and they all have individual personalities. Something must have disrupted their colony and shattered it completely. Overpopulation or destruction of their primary habitat come to mind.