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| Author | Post | |||||||||
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blackfox
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got a series of pictures today of a brown rat at my local reserve ,it was collecting stones from beneath the bird feeder and taking them away two or three at a time ,never seen anything like it before and got no valid reason for its behaviour i just sat and watched mouth open for around three hours .???   |
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jk
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Great pictures. Maybe he is building a catapult to launch stones at birds who steal his/her food.  |
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Squarerigger
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Nice photos. Can you give some info about the shot, i.e. tripod, distance from subject (hopefully out of stones throw), lens, etc. |
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blackfox
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Squarerigger wrote:Nice photos. Can you give some info about the shot, i.e. tripod, distance from subject (hopefully out of stones throw), lens, etc. yep no problem at all , camera D7000 lens 300mm-f4 + 1.7 t.c giving 500mm focal length iso 1000 f8 1/800th sec spot metering all shots hand held i rarely use a support being one big gentleman as robert can confirm LOL distance from subject 5.6 mtrs or 18 feet |
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Squarerigger
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blackfox wrote:Squarerigger wrote: Thank you. Nice combination of camera and lens. |
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Eric
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blackfox wrote:got a series of pictures today of a brown rat at my local reserve ,it was collecting stones from beneath the bird feeder and taking them away two or three at a time ,never seen anything like it before and got no valid reason for its behaviour i just sat and watched mouth open for around three hours .??? Rats are very intelligent. I've seen them use crude tools to get at food. But I've never seen that before! Amazing ...and nice shots! I assume it was wanting the stones to either cover something or support something. Would be fascinating to find out what it was up to. |
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Eric
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It's catching.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa88vSgNfzw&feature=youtube_gdata_player |
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jk
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Yes they are very intelligent and they bite!!! Personally I cant stand the smell of rats and mice (comes from working with them in the labs) so I dont really like them but they are not dirty creatures except when they live in dirty places. |
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steve of oxford
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I think I have the answer to this: From the way the rat is holding the stones, I'd say it thinks it's moving babies around. |
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Squarerigger
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Great find Eric. I did some searching and found these critters sometimes do use stones for making nests. Also, it seems some species of these gather up objects and on the way to where they want to use them, they find something they like better and switch out objects and forget about the first item they had. |
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Eric
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Squarerigger wrote:Great find Eric. Sounds like the wife shopping. |
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KenRay
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Here in southern Arizona we ahve a rat known as the 'Pack' Rat probably because he will 'pack' anything into his nest. I have a particular hate against this species. They also have a nasty habit of building their nests in autos ,in the engine compartment usually. In addition the seem to like the taste of any covering of electric wires. They can build theses nests in literally a matter of hours. My personal hate is because in my case he decided to build his nest on top of the transmission of my 2006 Mustang ( prized possesion) and prceded to chew in two some of the wires there. First cost was $600 to splice 2 wires after finding a mechanic with small hands . Second occurance cost another $600 to repair what I feel was a wire the first mechanic missed. Last cost was $1200 to repar more wires that were probably missed in the first two repairs. This time they dropped the transmission to do the job correctly (maybe). Have no idea how to stop the infestations. Some say a light in area will discourage them,others say a bar of Irish Spring soap will discourage them, others an electronic noise device. I have instituted the Irish Spring solution and the electronic device and have hopes they will discourage further destruction. So I kinda hate Rats for economic reasons especially the 'Pack' type. |
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Iain
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Rats will sometimes use stones to form a base for there nests. |
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jk
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KenRay wrote: Here in southern Arizona we ahve a rat known as the 'Pack' Rat probably because he will 'pack' anything into his nest. I have a particular hate against this species. They also have a nasty habit of building their nests in autos ,in the engine compartment usually. In addition the seem to like the taste of any covering of electric wires. They can build theses nests in literally a matter of hours. My personal hate is because in my case he decided to build his nest on top of the transmission of my 2006 Mustang ( prized possesion) and prceded to chew in two some of the wires there. First cost was $600 to splice 2 wires after finding a mechanic with small hands . Second occurance cost another $600 to repair what I feel was a wire the first mechanic missed. Last cost was $1200 to repar more wires that were probably missed in the first two repairs. This time they dropped the transmission to do the job correctly (maybe). Have no idea how to stop the infestations. Some say a light in area will discourage them,others say a bar of Irish Spring soap will discourage them, others an electronic noise device. I have instituted the Irish Spring solution and the electronic device and have hopes they will discourage further destruction. So I kinda hate Rats for economic reasons especially the 'Pack' type.Ken, Understand your problem. There is a similar problem in Germany that one of my friends told me about. The 'cure' is to seal the underside of the car engine bay with chicken wire so they cant get in. Of course you need to make sure that there is airflow so that the engine doesnt lose the additional cooling otherwise a solid plate would work better. |
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