Rats are great at remembering where they last sniffed the strawberries. Alexey Krasaven/Flickr hide caption
Rats That Reminisce May Lead To Better Tests For Alzheimer's Drugs
Victoria Thomas' backyard was overrun with rats a few years ago. She tried everything from trenching and underground fencing to poison traps but nothing worked — until she got three feral cats. Courtesy of Victoria Thomas hide caption
Facing A Growing Rat Problem, A Neighborhood Sets Off The Cat Patrol
Who can identify TB faster: lab technicians for APOPO such as Karim Chang'a, Rehema Kondo, Eustachian Sezary, or a rat like Chewa? No contest — it's the rat. Maarten Boersema/APOPO hide caption
Green when young, and about the size of an adult human's hand when full-grown, Dryococelus australis is more commonly known as the Lord Howe Island stick insect, or the tree lobster. Courtesy of Rohan Cleave/Melbourne Zoo hide caption
Victoria, a 2-year-old rat, sniffs for TNT, sticking her nose high in the air to indicate she's found some. She works her way down a 10-meter line with a handler on either end, and is able to detect the presence of TNT at a distance of approximately half a yard. Michael Sullivan for NPR hide caption
In Cambodia, Rats Are Being Trained To Sniff Out Land Mines And Save Lives
In the study, muscle cells were injected into the cell-free "scaffolding" of a rat limb, which provided shape and structure onto which regenerated tissue could grow. Bernhard Jank, MD/Ott Laboratory, Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Regenerative Medicine hide caption
Gerbils are harmless... Right? Peter Knight/Flickr hide caption
Rats Blamed For Bubonic Plague, But Gerbils May Be The Real Villains
Who, me? The Asian relative of this domestic gerbil is a well-known host to the bacteria that cause plague. Valentina Storti/Flickr hide caption
Aside from this little guy, there are 1,999,999 more rats in New York City, according to a new study. That's still significantly less than tales of 8 million. iStockphoto hide caption
New Yorkers can take city-run classes to learn how to make their homes and businesses less attractive to these guys. Ludovic Bertron/Flickr hide caption
The Lyubov Orlova sits derelict at dockside in Newfoundland in October 2012. Dan Conlin/Wikipedia Commons hide caption
Rats aren't only problem in Tehran. These were running free over the weekend in Luton, England. Barcroft Media/Barcroft Media /Landov hide caption