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sometimes they do if you have really good hearing you can sometimes hear there little feet tatter

Answer

Rats sometimes make a noise known as either chittering or bruxing, which is when they chatter their teeth. This indicates either excitement and happiness, or, if the rat is bruxing without stopping very much over long periods of time, it indicates pain, discomfort, or illness. Rats do squeak, but not as much as mice. They normally squeak when they are startled, annoyed, or frightened.

Answer

The above answers refer to Norway rats aka Rattus norvegicus, the species which we keep as pets. Norway rats are actually quite vocal but their voices are so high we rarely hear them, except when they fight each other and really shout, and they are also usually quite quiet when moving about.

On the other hand Rattus rattus, the ship, black or roof rat, has a much lower voice which we humans can hear, and they are exceptionally noisy. They shriek, hiss, quack, swear and chatter all night long and are also very fond of crashing about knocking things over, and strumming on anything they can find which makes a twanging noise. An American woman who had had roof rats living in a jasmine bush by her back door when she was a child said that it sounded like there was a professional hockey match going on out there every night. They're also rather smelly, whereas Norway rats usually just have a faint smell like digestive biscuits.

Norway rats only evolved in the last couple of thousand years and only reached most of Europe (from Central Asia viaRussia) in the 18th C, and they are usually quite discreet and polite animals. Most of the legends about rats, how they squeal and how fierce they are, are actually derived from the ship rat. Even though they are small - not much bigger than a big hamster - and have a much weaker bite than a Norway, they're very pugnacious. Male ship rats really will leap at your face, screaming like banshees - but they aren't trying to tear your throat out, as Mediaeval writers assumed. They just want to widdle on your head and then trample it well in with their feet, to prove they've dominated you, and they'll do it to any male of any species, even to dogs and cats. But they're also capable of making friends with any species, and there are cases of wild ship rats just deciding to be somebody's pet and marching up and going "Hello, I live with you now, isn't this nice?"

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14y ago

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