Common Australian Rodent Pests You Should Know

Australian Rodent Pests: Mice and Rats

Almost forty percent of the mammal species populations are rodents. Mice and rats are one of the most common Australian rodent pests. They are destructive and voracious household pest, eating any food item, paper or clothes that comes their way.

Rodents are described by a pair of constantly growing incisors at the lower and upper jaws and are found in all parts of the world excluding Antarctica. They live in various terrestrial habitats, like man-made environments.

Rodents, throughout their existence have been used for/as so many things such as food, clothing, pets, and laboratory animals in the process of research. Some rodents are sometimes measured to be hostile, causing the extinction of several species like the island birds, formerly isolated from land based predators. Examples of Rodents are mice, squirrels, rats, beavers and chipmunks amongst others.

Mice

Mice (singular mouse) are a small rodent usually having a pointed nose (snout), small-rounded ears, a body length tail with scales as well as a high breeding frequency. The most commonly known mice species are the house mouse. Though they are also popularly used as pets, they are common Australian rodent pests just like rats, cockroaches and spiders. Mice are also known to occupy human homes for shelter and food. They bore holes in walls or floors to house themselves and hide foods gathered from human kitchens.  Animals like Cats, snakes, wild dogs, birds of prey, foxes and even some types of arthropods feed on mice. However, the mice because of their amazing adaptability to virtually any type of environment, they are one of the most prosperous mammalian-genera existing on Earth.

Mice, in some perspectives, are considered pests since they are a major cause of crop damage, creating structural destruction and dispersing diseases with the use their feces and parasites. As night-time animals, mice compensate for their lowly eye-sight with a powerful sense of hearing, relying mostly on their good sense of smell to find food and escape predators.

Mice are herbivores in nature, consuming any type of grain or fruit from plants. Nevertheless, they adapt quite well to urban environment and can eat practically every kind of food leftovers. Mice, in captivity, owners feed them with mouse diets (pallets) which have complete nutrition; however, they still require a lot of vegetables.

Rats

Rats are several medium sized rodents with long tails of the super-family Muroidea. The real rats (True Rats) are of the genus Rattus group which the most significant to humans are the black rat as well as the brown rat. Several Australian rodent pests are called rats, because they share  numerous characteristics with the true rats.

These rodents are characteristically distinguished from mice through their size. Usually, when a person sees a big muroid rodent, he or she calls it rat, and if it is of a smaller size, it will be a mouse. However, just like the mice, they are habit man-made environment and can adapt to any kind of environments. Rats that live outdoors in places such as bushes or forest can grow really large. These large rats are mostly termed giant rats.

Rodents chew wires, plastics, cloth materials and litter the household, indoor and outdoor. They are companions you don’t want in your household. You need to drive out of your home before they cause nuisance to your home. Also, if you are a business owner, we are sure you want to get rid of pests, particularly rodents, from your business facility. Our commercial pest management experts are there to help you out with this. Call today!

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Robert Luckens

Robert is the founder of Rockypest Pty Ltd, formed at the end of 2013. Still trading as Rockingham Pest Control and Luckens Pest Control. Robert has been in the Pest Control Industry since 1988, prior to this he was in the fumigation industry for 3 years so with over 30 years experience you can be rest assured that you will receive the best possible service at all times.

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