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.