We have a small population of rats in the garden. In one area they have tunnelled under a concrete pad under our summerhouse. I have tried to get rid of them with poison but they don’t seem to eat it. So I set up a snap trap and a cage trap, baited with some cheese. At first nothing happened but the next night we caught a rat:
This first image shows the small rat on the cage trap.
Then it was tempted by the cheese in the snap trap:
It was then caught by the snap trap – you can also see the small piece of cheese that has been thrown of to the top right of the image:
Then a larger rat dragged it away and started eating it:
I did not know that rats were cannibalistic, but it seems they do this for 2 reasons: 1) to reduce the risk of smell attracting predators, and 2) it is a source of food.
I made a short video of the cannibalistic rat at work:
Cannibalistic Rat from Paul L.G. Morris on Vimeo.