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Rodents: Rodentia
Rats and mice attack our food in the farm fields, orchards, and livestock facilities. And what the rats and mice don’t eat, they spoil by contaminating it with their urine, feces, or fur. The loss of food worldwide to rodents is staggering. Experts estimate that rats and mice destroy enough food each year to feed 200 million people.
In buildings, rodents damage doors, floors, ceilings and walls as a result of their burrowing and gnawing activity. They also regularly gnaw on various utility pipes and electrical wiring.
Rodents have been responsible for, or implicated in, the spread of various diseases to people and domestic animals. Rodents carry many diseases such as, plague, murine typhus, rickettsial pox, salmonellosis, rat-bite fever, rabies, lymphocytic, choriomenigitis, trichinosis, typhoid, and dysentery.
Hearing: Rodents use hearing to locate objects to within a few inches away. Rats and mice have a frequency range of 50 kilohertz or more, which is much higher than humans who have a range of about 20 kilohertz.
Vision: Rats and mice have poor vision beyond three or four feet, but they are very sensitive to motion up to 30-50 feet away. For the most part, rodents are colorblind, but very light-colored or reflective objects may stand out in their environment and cause initial avoidance among sensitive rodents.
Smell: Odor is one of the rodent’s most important senses. Rodents mark objects and pathways with urine or glandular secretions. Rodents use their sense of smell to recognize the odors of the pathways to and from food sources, member of the opposite sex who are ready to mate, to differentiate between member of their own colonies and strangers, and to tell if a stranger is a strong or weak individual.
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