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I've kept rats my whole life and on one hand I'm not surprised, they'll eat what seems like literally anything, on the other hand they seriously pick their battles, a rat isn't going to engage with anything it's unaware of, they have extreme neophobia so I'm somewhat surprised this rat felt the situation out enough that it was comfortable doing this, I'd guess it had spent a lot of time around the bats, also surprising because the rat is a bit on the chonky side to be opportunistically hunting that way. Interesting.

3 months agoby neom

The rats here at Lund University hunt pigeons, friend of a friend took a video of a successful hunt just the other week, totally nuts. They wait in the bushes below the trees on campus, pounce on the pigeons when they land on the ground.

3 months agoby jakewins

Two thoughts come to mind:

- the rats are effectively as blind as the bat in the dark, are they relying purely on sound and air currents to gauge their attack?

- and what a fantastic new path for pathogen transmission.

3 months agoby nortlov

> The behavior is all the more impressive given that the rodents hunt at night, when they are effectively blind; the rats may rely on their whiskers to detect changes in air currents caused by the bats’ flapping wings.

Textbook example of the blind eating the blind.

3 months agoby pcthrowaway

The question "do rats eat bats?" sounds like taken straight from Alice In Wonderland, and now, disturbingly, we know that the answer is positive.

3 months agoby nine_k

Rats are extremely predatory, I once as a kid worked at a Reptile importer and a handful of rats escaped, they destroyed the mice from under their screen/grated cages. Almost as traumatic as when I learned how to dispatch an adult rat on the side of the table before feeding it off to the reptiles at 15 years old.

3 months agoby shaneofalltrad

> The behavior is all the more impressive given that the rodents hunt at night, when they are effectively blind

I can't access the paper to check if they verified it, but given there is a strong IR light, and even humans can see IR light if strong enough (and close enough in frequency, which is typically true for IR illumination for cameras), I wonder if that is true.

3 months agoby pflanze

Snakes do it too. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/kantemo-b...

3 months agoby notherhack

If you like the idea of vicious rats, read British horror writer James Herbert’s The Rats.

3 months agoby riazrizvi

The food chain myth destroyed so many people's minds. Wait until you hear that deer eat mice.

3 months agoby phendrenad2

I played bass for Snatching Bats

3 months agoby tomcam

Never underestimate a rat

3 months agoby rukuu001

Rough life inside a cave.