Word Finder - rats

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A medium-sized rodent belonging to the genus Rattus.

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Any of the numerous members of several rodent families (e.g. voles and mice) that resemble true rats in appearance, usually having a pointy snout, a long, bare tail, and body length greater than about 12 cm, or 5 inches.

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A person who is known for betrayal; a scoundrel; a quisling.

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What a rat, leaving us stranded here!

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An informant or snitch.

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A scab: a worker who acts against trade union policies.

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A person who routinely spends time at a particular location.

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He loved hockey and was a devoted rink rat.

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A wad of shed hair used as part of a hairstyle.

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A roll of material used to puff out the hair, which is turned over it.

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Vagina.

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Get your rat out.

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Short for muskrat.

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(usually with “on” or “out”) To betray a person or party, especially by telling their secret to an authority or an enemy; to turn someone in.

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He is going to rat us out!

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To work as a scab, going against trade union policies.

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(of a dog, etc.) To kill rats.

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A scratch or a score.

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A place in the sea with rapid currents and crags where a ship is likely to be torn apart in stormy weather.

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To scratch or score.

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He ratted a vertical line on his face with a pocket knife.

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To tear, rip, rend.

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Ratted to shreds.

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Damn, drat, blast; used in oaths.

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A ration.

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Expression of annoyance or disgust; damn, darn.

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Expression of disbelief.

Leather pinions must be protected from rats, which eat them freely.

Rats and mice, especially the guayabita (Mus musculus), an extremely destructive rodent, are very abundant.

The opossum (Didelphis) is represented by three or four species, two of which are so small that they are generally called wood rats.

Only full-grown ferrets are "worked to" rats.

The indigenous fauna of the islands is exceedingly poor in mammals, which are represented mainly by rats and bats.

For the distinctive characteristics of the family Muridae and the genus Mus, to which true rats and true mice alike belong, see Rodentia.

This long-tailed rat, originally a native of India, would seem to have first penetrated to all parts of the world and to have nearly or quite exterminated the indigenous rats.

Mice, rats, water-rats and moles, as well as frogs, constitute its principal food.

His arrival, however, roused the suspicion of the natives, and under King Mwanga's orders he was lodged in a filthy hut swarming with rats and vermin.

His mock heroics are, to say the least, amusing, and among these may be mentioned Myszeis, where he describes how King Popiel, according to the legend, was eaten up by rats.

The Park consists of about 265 acres of undulating land with natural woods and rocks, traversed by a gorge cut by Rock Creek, a tributary of the Potomac. The river and gorge extend into the country far beyond the Park, and in addition to the animals that have been introduced, there are many wild creatures living in their native freedom, such as musk rats in the creek, grey squirrels, crested cardinals and turkey buzzards.

The remarkable didunculus occurs in Samoa, and after the introduction of cats and rats, which preyed upon it, was compelled to change its habits, dwelling in trees instead of on the ground.

It is chiefly employed in destroying rats and other vermin, and in driving rabbits from their burrows.

Several are generally used at a time and without copes, as rats are fierce fighters.

In habits some are partially arboreal, others wholly terrestrial, and a few more or less aquatic. Among the latter, the most remarkable are the fish-eating rats (Ichthyomys) of North-western South America, which frequent streams and feed on small fish.

Some of its characteristic mammals and birds are the long-eared desert fox, four-toed kangaroo rats, Sonoran pocket mice, big-eared and tiny white-haired bats, road runner, cactus wren, canyon wren, desert thrashers, hooded oriole, black-throated desert sparrow, Texas night-hawk and Gambels quail.

The teats vary in number from a single abdominal pair in the guinea-pig to six thoracico-abdominal pairs in the rats; while in the Octodontidae and Capromyidae they are placed high up on the sides of the body.

In the squirrels and porcupines the tibia and fibula are distinct, but in rats and hares they are united, often high up. The hind foot is more variable than the front one, the digits varying in number from five, as in squirrels and rats, to four, as in hares, or even three, as in the capybara, viscacha and agouti.

In hares and pacas the inside of the cheeks is hairy; and in some species, pouched rats and hamsters, there are large internal cheek-pouches lined with hair, which open near the angles of the mouth and extend backwards behind the ears.

In the New World pouched rats (Geomyidae) the pouches open externally on the cheeks.

The fur varies exceedingly in character, - in some, like the chinchillas and hares, being fine and soft, while in others it is more or less replaced by spines on the upper surface, as in spiny rats and porcupines; these spines in several genera, as Xerus, Acomys, Platacanthomys, Echinothrix, Loncheres and Echinomys, being flattened.

In porcupines and hares the tendons of the flexor digitorum longus and flexor hallucis longus are connected in the foot, while in the rats and squirrels they are separate, and the flexor digitorum longus is generally inserted into the metatarsal of the first toe.

The American pouched rats, or pocket-gophers, constitute the third section, Geomyoidea, with the single family Geomyidae.

On account of certain structural peculiarities, the rats of Madagascar, which have a dentition like that of the cricetine Muridae, are separated as a distinct family, Nesomyidae.

A distinct sub-family, Lophiomyinae, is represented by the Central African arboreal spiny rats, Lophiomys, of which there are two or three species.

Voles, as typified by the water-rat and the tailed fieldmouse, are stouter built and shorter-nosed rodentsthan the typical rats and mice, with smaller ears and eyes and shorter tails; all being good burrowers.

The typical rats and mice, together with their nearest relatives, constitute the sub-family Murinae, which is represented by more than three hundred species, distributed over the whole of the Old World except Madagascar.

Here also may be noticed the huge Philippine long-haired rats of the genus Phlaeomys, characterized by their broad incisors, transversely laminated molars and large claws.

Mammals are not numerous; they include the cuscus, several species of bat, and some rats of great size.

A day-flying bat, whales and dolphins are about the only indigenous mammals; hogs, dogs and rats had been introduced before Cook's discovery.

It thus becomes an easy prey to the marauding creatures - cats, rats and so forth - which European colonists have, by accident or design, let loose in New Zealand.

In fact, as mentioned in the article Mouse, there is no possibility of defining the term "rat" when used in a sense other than as relating to the two species above mentioned; while there is also no hard-and-fast limit between the terms "rats" and "mice" when these are likewise employed in their now extended sense, "rats" being merely larger "mice," and vice versa.

Rats have, however, generally more rows of scales on the tail (reaching to 210 or more) than mice, in which the number does not exceed 180.

Since then (1904) Miss Florence Durham has shown that if the skins of young or embryonic mammals (rats, rabbits and guinea-pigs) be ground up and extracted in water, and the expressed juice be then incubated with solid tyrosin for twentyfour hours, with the addition of a very small amount of ferrous sulphate to act as an activator, a pigmentary substance is thrown down.

The wild mouse, rat and rabbit are self-coloured, but the domesticated forms include various piebald patterns, such as spotted forms among mice, and the familiar black and white hooded and dorsal-striped pattern of some tame rats.

P. Mudge for rats, that in a cross between a coloured individual of known gametic purity and an albino, the individuals of the progeny in either the first or second, or both generations, may differ, and that the difference in some cases wholly depends upon the albino used.

P. Mudge have both shown that albino rats also carry in a latent condition the determinants for black or grey.

Among albino rats, for instance, the author of this article has reason to believe, upon theoretical grounds resting on an experimental basis, that probably no less than thirteen types exist.

Although the British representatives of this group should undoubtedly retain their vernacular designations of water-rat and short-tailed field-mouse, the term "vole" is one of great convenience in zoology as a general one for all the members of the group. Systematically voles are classed in the mammalian order Rodentia, in which they constitute the typical section of the subfamily Microtinae in the Muridae, or mouse-group. As a group, voles are characterized by being more heavily built than rats and mice, and by their less brisk movements.

They have very small eyes, blunt snouts, inconspicuous ears and short limbs and tails, in all of which points they are markedly contrasted with true rats and mice.

In common with lemmings and other representatives of the Microtinae, voles are, however, broadly distinguished from typical rats and mice by the structure of their three pairs of molar teeth.

Bears, foxes, otters and sables are numerous, as also the reindeer in the north, and the musk deer, hares, squirrels, rats and mice everywhere.

The conquest of Scotland was soon completed; at last she lay at an English victor's feet; the General Assembly was turned out into the street by " some rats of Musketeers and a troup of horse," and the risings of Glencairn, Lorne (eldest son of Argyll) and others in the highlands were easily crushed.

The agriculturist has many enemies to contend with, the tax-gatherer being perhaps the most deadly; and drought, earthquakes, rats and locusts have at all periods been responsible for barren years.

The field rats (Mus mettada) occasionally multiply so exceedingly as to diminish the out-turn of the local harvest, and to require special measures for their destruction.

Noteworthy in the animal life of the lower Sonoran and tropic region are a variety of snakes and lizards, desert rats and mice; and, among birds, the cactus wren, desert thrasher, desert sparrow, Texas night-hawk, mocking-bird and ground cuckoo or road runner (Geococcyx Californianus).

Squirrels, flying-squirrels, porcupines, civet-cats, rats, bats, flying-foxes and lizards are found in great variety; snakes of various kinds, from the boa-constrictor downward, are abundant, while the forests swarm with tree-leeches, and the marshes with horse-leeches and frogs.

On this the principal people sleep, and it serves as a storehouse inaccessible to rats, which infest all the islands.

A very remarkable circumstance was the death of animals (rats, and more rarely snakes) at the outbreak of an epidemic. The rats brought up blood, and the body of one examined after death by Dr Francis showed an affection of the lungs.'

Simpson in his Report on the Causes of the Plague in Hong Kong (1903) reports the endemicity of the plague in that colony to be maintained by (a) infection among rats often connected with infectious material in rat runs or in houses, the virus of which has not been destroyed, (b) retention of infection in houses which are rat-ridden, and (c) infected clothing of people who have been ill or died of plague.