For instance, brown rats like to hang out on or near the ground rather than in the trees or other high spots, where black rats often prefer to stay. Rats are seen in a street in New York, City.

By LAURA UNGAR AP Science Writer Brown rats are the undisputed winners of the real rat race. New research suggests that they crawled off ships arriving in North America earlier than previously ...

Brown said DC’s numbers could be so high because the city encourages residents to call in each rat sighting. Public reports of rats are very useful but can be flawed, said field ecologist Parsons.

Brown rats showed up in the Americas later, though exactly how much later has gone unresolved. Many historical accounts indicate an arrival date sometime around U.S. independence in 1776, ...

New research suggests that brown rats crawled off ships earlier than previously thought and quickly out-competed rival black rats to take over North American cities.

Rat and human lives have long intersected, but there's relatively little research about them. Thanks to advances in genomics and paleoarcheology, a lot more study may be on the horizon.

Rats swarm around a bag of garbage near a dumpster in New York on July 7, 2000. A study published Wednesday, April 3, 2024, in the journal Science Advances suggests that brown rats crawled off ...

Brown rats are the undisputed winners of the real rat race. New research suggests that they crawled off ships arriving in North America earlier than previously thought and out-competed rodent ...

National News How brown rats crawled off ships and conquered North American cities The data suggests that shipping networks across the Atlantic Ocean “essentially functioned as rat superhighways ...

Shipping networks across the Atlantic “essentially functioned as rat superhighways,” and one species quickly took over. Here’s how the lowly brown rat came to lead the pack.