Rat Living Space

An animal species has a geographical range within which it occupies one or more habitats; habitats occupied by rats include agricultural land and built up areas. A habitat may be divided into biotopes, such as hedgerows and ware-houses. Within these are colonies of rats; and each rat has a region in which it moves-its home range. The home range of wild rats is probably quite small. It was studied by D.E. Davis and his colleagues in Baltimore and on a farm; in the city they trapped rats, marked, released and recaptured them; for 80 percent of the rats the distance between first and second captures was less than twenty meters.

They also put a dye in rat bait; the distribution of colored dung around the bait station indicated a range of about thirty meters in diameter. If an animal, a pair or a group occupies a region from which other members of its species are excluded, that region is a territory. Rats are territorial animals, but for males the relationship of territory with home range is not known. For female Rattus norvegicus the territory, when there is one, is probably the nest.

Mouse and Rat Species

All mice are the member of Mus genus. Mouse can be applied to other rat species out of mus genus. All mouse and rat are include in muroid rodent, mouse refer to small muroid rodent while rat refer to larger muroid rodent. Rodent that belonging to Mus genus are described on below:

Genus Mus – typical mice:
- Subgenus Coelomys

• Sumatran Shrewlike Mouse, Mus crocideroides (Western Sumatra)
• Major’s Mouse, Mus mayori (Sri Lanka)
• Gairdner’s Shremouse, Mus Pohari (Northeastern India to southwestern Cambodia and northern Vietnam)
• Volcano Mouse, Mus vulcani (Western Java)

- Mus Lepodoides species group

• Mus lepidoides

- Subgenus Mus

• Little Indian Field Mouse, Mus booduga (Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, southern Nepal, central Myanmar)
• Ryukyu Mouse, Mus caroli (Ryukyu islands, Taiwan and southern China to Thailand; introduced in Malaysia and western Indonesia)
• Fawn colored Mouse, Mus cervicolor (Northtern India to Vietnam; introduced to Sumatra and Java)
• Cook’s Mouse, Mus cookie (Southern and northeastern India and Nepal to Vietnam)
• Cypriot Mouse, Mus cypriacus (Cyprus)
• Mus majorus (Athens, Greece)
• Servant Mouse, Mus famulus (Southwestern India)
• Sheath tailed Mouse, Mus fragilicaudia (Thailand and Laos)
• Macedonia Mouse, Mus macedonicus (Balkan to Israel and Iran)
• House Mouse, Mus musculus (introduced worldwide)
• Mus nitidulus (Central Myanmar)
• Steppe Mouse, Mus spicilegus (Austria to southern Ukraine and Greece)
• Algerian Mouse, Mus spretus (Southern France, Iberian Peninsula, Balearic Islands, Morocco to Tunisia)
• Earth colored Mouse, Mus terricolor (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Introduced to Sumatra)

- Subgenus Nannomys – sub Saharan Africa

• Baole’s Mouse, Mus baonlei (Ivory Coast to Guinea)
• Toad Mouse, Mus bufo (Mountains of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and neighbouring parts of the Democratic of Congo)
• Callewaert’s Mouse, Mus callewaerty (Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo)
• Gounda Mouse, Mus goundae (Central African Republic)
• Hausa Mouse, Mus haussa (Senegal to northern Nigeria)
• Desert Pygmy Mouse, Mus indutus (Southern Angola to western Zimbabwe and northern South Africa)
• Mahomet Mouse, Mus Mahomet (Ethiopia, southwestern Uganda and southwestern Kenya)
• Matthey’s Mouse, Mus mattheyi (Ghana)
• African pygmy Mouse, Mus minutoides (zimbabwe, southern Mozambique, South Africa)
• Neave’s Mouse, Mus setulosus (Senegal to Ethiopia and western Kenya)
• Setzer’s Pygmy Mouse, Mus setzeri (northeasthern Namibia, Bostwana, and western Zambia)
• Thomas’s Pygmy Mouse, Mus sorella (Eastern Cameroon to western Tanzania)
• Delicate Mouse, Mus tenellus (Sudan to southern Somalia and central Tanzania)
• Gray Bellied Pygmy Mouse, Mus triton (Southern Ethiopia to central Angola and Malawi)

- Subgenus Pyromys

• Ceylon Spiny Mouse, Mus fernandoni (Sri Lanka)
• Phillips’s Mouse, Mus phillipsi (Southwestern India)
• Flat Haired Mouse, Mus Platythrix (India)
• Rock Loving Mouse, Mus saxicola (Southern Pakistan, southern Nepal, and India)
• Shortridge’s Mouse, Mus shortridgei (Myanmar to southwestern Cambodia and northwestern Vietnam)

Rats Breeding

Almost of use hate to mouse but certain people breed mouse for pet. We hate because mouse can make broken of structure, wood appliance, windows and door. Cats, wild dogs, foxes, birds of prey, snakes and even certain kinds of anthropods have been known to prey heavily upon mouse. Mouse remark easily to adapt in many environmental, said that mouse is one of the successful mammalian genera living on the Earth.

Mouse has bad eyes, instead for eyesight with a keen sense of hearing, and relies especially on their sense of smell to locate rat food and avoid predators. Mouse has a fast cycle of live, breeding onset is at about 50 days of age in both females and males, and female have their first estrus at 25 – 40 days. Mouse include of polyestrous and breed over the year, ovulation is spontaneous. The duration of estrous cycle is 4 – 5 days and estrus itself lasts about 12 hours, occurring in the evening.

Mouse has average gestation period in 20 days. The average litter size 10 – 12 during optimum production is highly strain dependent. The young mouse called as pups with weight 0,5 to 1.5 g at birth, hairless, and have closed eyelids and ears. Mouse can have 4 to 6 of pups at one time of birth. After three weeks mouse have ready for pregnant again.