Rats can travel up to 90 meters from their nest. Normally however, they will only travel as far as in necessary to find food, water, shelter, or nest building materials. As nocturnal creatures, rats do most of their exploring at night.
How do rats navigate?
Rats follow their noses. A rat’s sense of smell is significantly more powerful than even that of a dog. Because of their acute sense of smell, rats have been used to sniff out landmines in Mozambique. The little creatures have also been used to detect illness in humans, such as tuberculosis. While out scavenging, rats can pick up a scent from food, and follow their nose to reach it.
Rats prefer to move around without being seen. As such they tend to avoid wide open spaces, and instead stick to areas where it’s harder to see them. Favourite corridors for rats include ditches, hedges and trees, pipes and gutters, along walls or fences.
How to prevent rats getting into your property
The best way to prevent rats from entering your property is to identify and block all entry points. An entry point is any hole 20mm or larger, or gap that leads into your building. 20mm is the diameter of a penny. This means that to prevent entry of rats, you need to seal all penny sized gaps into the building. If you want to mouse-proof too, then your building you should aim to fill all 5mm gaps.
The process involves walking around your property and searching for the gaps. Once you find a gap, stuff it with wire wool and polyfila or place a galvanised mesh sheet over the top with adhesive.
Popular places for gaps include:
- Where telephone wires and other cables enter
- Gaps around doors
- Gaps under garage door
- Around windows
- Through holes in air bricks
- Under eaves leading to attic
How high can rats climb walls?
How high rats can climb depends on the texture of the wall. The rougher the texture, the easier it will be to climb. Here is a video of a rat climbing a wall:
This means that while you search for rat-sizes gaps to fill, you shouldn’t limit your search to the lower half of the building, but instead you may need to look for gaps everywhere from the foundation to the roof.
Even if your walls are silky smooth, then consider that rats can jump almost 1 meter vertically. It’s common place for rats to reach heights by hopping from surface to surface. Common surfaces that rats use to get high up are, bins or other objects stacked next to walls, window sills, adjoining walls or fences, and nearby branches.
How to rat-proof the easy way?
The easy way to rat proof is to call a pest control expert. Merlin can help you. We cover the entire UK and Republic of Ireland. Get in touch.
