What Can Rats Chew Through?
The muscles used to control their jaws are very powerful and they are anchored within the eye socket around an eyeball. When a rat grinds its teeth, the eyeballs will vibrate in or out. This is meant to indicate contentment and pleasure.
Rats need to have a powerful jaw muscle since they have incisors which never stop growing. Rats may chew or gnaw on different things in order to wear down their teeth. If a rat lets its incisors grow without any check, it can grow to an 86 degree angle and this can make it impossible for the rats to be able to close their mouth or to eat and this leads to death.
Rats may chew many things as long as they are not harder than their own teeth. A rat’s teeth are harder than copper and iron and since their teeth are harder, rats are able to chew through many things that people may use to stop them from entering the house. A rat’s teeth may exert 24000 pounds for every square inch. They are able to chew through cinder blocks, asbestos, cement, wood, aluminum, lead, brick and plastic.
In addition to strong teeth, rats are also able to fall over 50 feet and they do not suffer any injuries, or they can tread water for over 3 days and they do not drawn. They are able to squeeze into an opening only the size a quarter and they breed at high rate while their population increases at a high rate in a given place. Most of their genes have mutated and this makes them immune to the rat poisons available.
Even if a rat may look as if they are invincible opponents, it is easy to keep rats outside of your home. The first step is to make sure that your house is always clean to avoid the rat infestation. Remove available water and foods which can make the rats choose to go away. You should store pantry goods and food in metal or glass containers and you may also use them to cover up the trash can. You should be able to pick things up and organize them where the rodents are not able to reach. Outside, you should keep compost piles, wood and shrubbery away from buildings.
Even if the rats chew through many things to get an entrance into your home, you should not leave its entry point open. You should make sure that most entry points have been closed. You should use a metal screen on the dryer vents and chimney. You need to ensure that the roof soffits and the foundation of the building are maintained well.
Do rats chew on wires? Why?
Rats are chewing a lot of things inside your house, including electrical wires. The reason why they do that is because in that way they keeping their teeth from overgrowing and sharp at the same time. Rats chewing on wires can cause many problems for people, including the fire and potential catastrophe to your house. The wires are just softer than other things that rats are chewing, so that could be another reason why they’re attracted to them. Many unsolved cases of house fires are related to rats and chewing wires.
Rodent incisors are composed like etches, with hard yellow to orange veneer all things considered—the front line—and milder white dentine shaping whatever is left of the tooth. Since rodent incisors become persistently, congested teeth are a conceivable issue. You may have heard that unless a rodent has wood or other hard material to bite his teeth will congest, yet this isn't valid. The teeth congest just if there is a restorative issue which counteracts ordinary tooth pounding. In healthy rats, the upper and lower teeth are lined up and keep one another sharp and the correct length by granulating together. This explains why they have to chew something all the time, but it not explains why they like to chew on wires, specifically.
The other reasons why rats are chewing on wires are unknown. They don’t eat the whole wire; they just chew on plastic covering. However, it is recorded in some cases that rats even ate the copper from the wires, so the whole thing is pretty much unclear and cannot be solved with certainty. Although, one thing is certain; they don’t chew on wires because that’s their food and they are always hungry (they eat up to 15 times per day), simply they have to chew on something and the wires are very attractive to them. Nobody knows why. There are a lot of theories, but they’re just that- the theories.
Apart from teeth growing control theory, we couldn’t offer some better explanation. What we can do is to advise you to take care of your electrical system in your house and regularly check the wires, especially if you have experienced a shortage of electricity. If you already have rats in your house and you previously had problems with rats chewing on wires, the best thing is to do is not to leave your house for longer period, it can be disastrous if nobody’s home and the rats cause a fire in house. Nobody will be there to react and prevent the catastrophe.
Yes, rats do chew on wires. In fact, they will chew on practically any material they come across, with the exception of
really strong metals. If you’re trying to protect your home against rats, we would always recommend using something like
aluminum flashing, or even steel mesh wiring. If you use insulating expanding foam, plastic, wood, or even brick, the rats
can chew right through them. That’s right - even concrete.
Rats have teeth that grow all the time. Those front teeth never stop growing. The rats nibble, chew and gnaw their way through life
because they need to. If they didn’t grind their teeth down in this way, against the hard materials they come up against, their teeth
would probably be too long for their little heads. Not only would this make life awkward for the rat, they would no longer be able to
fit though the tiny spaces if they had super-long gnashers to deal with. Just for the record, a rat can fit through a hole about a quarter
of an inch in diameter. If they can’t fit through it yet, they’ll just chew, dig and scratch until they can fit through. It won’t take
them long.
The rats chewing action is instinctive, so although destructive, you can’t hold it against them too much. It really is in their nature to just
chew. They need to. They can’t help it.
For more rat information, visit our
rat removal tips page, or for more specific how-to instructions, read the
how to get rid of rats page with 6 step-by-step instructions.
If you have a problem with rats above your ceiling in your house, read my
rats in the attic guide. The most important part of rat control is sealing shut entry holes into the building, but after
you've done that, you'll want to know
how to kill rats humanely to complete the rat control job. If you need to hire professional help in your city, click on my directory of over
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