We humans are the smartes species on earth. The most opportunistic. The most resourceful. The most everything. End of fantasy, now we return to the truth. http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/10/21/smart.rat.reut/index.html A single rat managed to outsmart a truckload of scientists with hightech equipment for several months. That's right. The monkeys had trouble catching a single rodent. It even had a radio tag. Now let us all become humble again and face the fact that God is probably a rat.
And here I thought it was the face of a spuriousmonkey. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Wow, it swam 400 meters to another island *Across the open sea I remind you*.... That is some rat... :bugeye:
in all fairness, the radio transmitter died, and they could therefore only guess where it was from their last signals. but you do have to wonder about the intellignce of some of these scientists still. they release a rat(knowing that rats are capable of sea migration) into an area surrounded by wildlife reserve islands.
The rat in question was probably a brain surgeon and rocket scientist in its own society and would have easily been able to unneuter itself.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ... Not really, that's just all of them. They were around before we were, probably will be around a good deal longer after our species is just dust... Y'know, someone really should get around to writing a book about that... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
>>>>but you do have to wonder about the intellignce of some of these scientists still. they release a rat(knowing that rats are capable of sea migration) into an area surrounded by wildlife reserve islands. would have thought at least two rats were required, preferably of different sex, to be any real danger. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Hmmm... scenario 1: The rat in question got pregnant in the lab (unknown to researchers) scenario 2: The rat in question meets rat of opposite sex at island. Now there are two.
Scenerio 1: If they were concerned at all about the reproduction thing they would of probably used a male rat as it'd be easy to castrate and not pregnant. Scenerio 2: If the "Husky" Norway rat was not castrated then ran in to a smaller prieviosly undiscovered species of rat they could of produced a vile horde of rats with a wide selection of DNA, could get a Killer bee situation here Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Seems like a hazardous way to run a study. Using their methodology I'd like to study Mountain Lion, human attack/eating habits by releasing a mountain lion at tour De France.
But "traps, baits, and sniffer dogs" are only used on land so would have nothing to do with rodents migrating to outlying islands. This is definitely a good study about how new animals are able to populate uninhabitatd islands (although it is just a reporter's article), but as he says: "Norway rats have invaded the uninhabited Noises Islands at least six times between 1981 and 2002." But 400 meters is only a quarter of a mile (1,320 ft.). That's really not very far. Dogs can about ten miles - or more - and the farthest human swimmer, Australia’s Susie Maroney, swam 206 km (128 miles) from Isla Mujeres, Mexico to Las Tumbas beach in Cuba.
