WANTED: rats! Reward: P5 each. This is the interesting bounty-hunting game in San Luis, Pampanga. The local government is paying P5 each for every rat killed and has allocated P1 million, which is good for 200,000 rats. They want to stop the infestation of rats in the town's farmlands. According to the town mayor, the program is expected to save P75 million worth of palay, which is estimated to be damaged by 200,000 rats if not killed. Reminder for bounty hunters--no need to bring the whole rat. Just present the tail.
Killing those rats will not just save farmlands. It might save lives or properties, too. Rats are known carriers of diseases like bubonic plague, typhus and leptospirosis. They also destroy houses and appliances by chewing walls, electrical cRox Penaables and anything that they can bite. They steal food too. We dislike them because they are filthy and smelly. They live in sewers and other dirty places.
Why do rats like to chew things? They chew wood, plastic, aluminum and even cement. Their love of chewing is due, in part, to the fact that their teeth never stop growing. In order to keep them from becoming too long, making eating impossible, rats must constantly gnaw to wear down their teeth.
Well, rats may have a bad image. But for sure, they have a role to play in the environment just like other species. We have all have a part in the ecosystem. So what role do rats play? In the wild, rats are an important part of the predatory ecosystem. They are food for other species. They are eaten by owls, falcons, hawks, snakes, lizards and other predatory animals. This predator-prey relationship is important to maintain a balanced ecosystem.
Rats also serve as seed dispersers in the wild. They eat fruits and nuts and carry seeds far from the parent tree, giving a chance to a new sapling. Rats ingest items that contain seeds, many seeds then passing out of their bodies intact via rat droppings.
In urban areas, rats do not have predators so they multiply fast. While there are domesticated cats, they do not catch rats for food. Rats begin breeding as soon as five weeks of age and continue until about age two. Females are fertile approximately every three weeks, and during this time they have been known to mate up to 500 six hours. The resulting pregnancy usually lasts about three weeks, and the litter size typically ranges from six to 20 babies.
If rats have no predators in the wild, they also create havoc in the ecosystem. On Easter Island, they’re suspected of having wiped out palm trees by eating all the nuts. On other islands, they threaten seabirds by eating eggs and chicks. There is no balanced predator-prey relationship in these places. No species is eating rats just like in the city.
And so in places where there are no rat predators, it is us humans who put their population in check. We can poison or trap them, or let cats do some of the work (like my cats who leave dead mice on our doorstep). In extreme cases, like the one in San Luis, they are hunted for a reward.