Hi! Coming from a South African living in Pretoria, is it true that your New York rats are as big as cats? I’m curious and would really love to know! If so, WHY?

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Dapper-Presence4975@reddit

I think people sometimes get confused when they see possums, but think they saw a “rat.” Possums can reach the size of house cats, and they “poof up” when threatened.

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

They also do really play dead. If you haven’t seen it before it looks scary.

This big dead rodent with long pointy teeth that appears dead suddenly moves a little bit and to the uninitiated it can be startling.

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silk_mitts_top_titts@reddit

My hound dog brought one in the house one time. I was like bro dont drop that in here, its not dead...

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Dapper-Presence4975@reddit

Startling for sure, but they’re actually not dangerous unlike those trash pandas, raccoons…

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

Yeah they’re pretty harmless. I have had to fish a couple of those fakers out of my trash. A pair of gloves and a quick move of the creatures to the wood line takes care of it.

You don’t even really have a risk of rabies because possums generally have body temps too cold to support infection with rabies.

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thr0wawa3ac0unt@reddit

Nope, propoganda. The rats are normal sized

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TheRealManlyWeevil@reddit

nyc's rats are normal sized, it's everyone else who has small rats

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sweetbaker@reddit

I mean they need to be large enough to train the turtles

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Adventurous-Chef8776@reddit

Do you mean thealligators in the sewer

I'll admit I got kind of attached to New York subway pizza rat. I was rooting for him.

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ItchyK@reddit

I mean most of that propaganda was probably New Yorkers telling urban myth stories about Rat Kings and shit like that. Someone's Uncle saw a rat so big that it ate a small dog. He swears by it.

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wwhsd@reddit

I wonder how many “giant rats” were actually possums.

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1nfam0us@reddit

Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist.

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ucbiker@reddit

Tbh a lot of places have small cats. Like street cats in many other countries are pretty small, so like the size of a large rat.

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omnipresent_sailfish@reddit

The rats are normal sized. The raccoons on the other hand…

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The_Motherlord@reddit

I'm in LA and I've seen raccoons standing on their hind legs and seriously the size of a 5-7 year old child. They know how to work doorknobs.

Do not like.

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

There name derives from a native (I think Algonquin) word which means he who washes/rubs his hands because of their little dexterous hands.

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The_Motherlord@reddit

They also like to wash their food. Keepers used to give them cotton candy when I work at the zoo.

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

Now I’m imagining an absolutely devastated raccoon after washing his delicious cotton candy and it disappears. That makes me sad.

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Neat_Shallot_606@reddit

It's scary when a raccoon bigger than 90% of dogs walks down the sidewalk in the middle of the day. They know they can take you.

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

I’d be avoiding any raccoon I saw in the middle of the day. That is a rabies vector for sure.

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Neat_Shallot_606@reddit

I don't think he was rabid, just huge and bold.

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freeski919@reddit

Rats are rats. There is not a special species of NYC rat that grows bigger than other rats. They're just your run of the mill Norway rat.

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

I think a lot of people have seen mice and then see a rat and think it is massive.

I did research in a rat facility so I’d say the rats I have seen in NYC are a little bigger than science rats but science rats have controlled diets and are all really genetically similar to each other.

NYC rats probably eat more than science rats just given the easy availability of nearly unlimited food.

But no they are not cat sized.

Now there are African rats they use to detect land mines. Those apparently are cat sized.

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sadthrow104@reddit

Wonder what nyc rats manly eat. Leftover pizza?

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

Famously, yes. But any trash and NYC puts its trash on the street for pickup so there’s a lot of easy access for rats

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sadthrow104@reddit

I have to wonder why NYC of all cities here and globally decided that it’s a good idea to leave trash bags on the sidewalk. I understand it notoriously has no alleyways…but still.

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

Yeah I think it’s just because it was old and never had alleys.

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Current_Poster@reddit

No, thats not true. They're normal sized. I was once in a subway station, saw two rats chasing eachother on a sort of island in the middle of the station, realized I'd been watching them for about five minutes and realizing I needed to get out of town for a weekend or something.

Another fun note: you may have seen videos of rats doing specific things (Pizza Rat, for instance, or a rat perching on the head of a sleeping subway passenger)- those are domestic pet rats trained to do those things, you can tell the difference if you've ever seen a wild rat vs a pet rat.

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

Yeah I used to work with science rats. They look very different than subway rats. Often they also look very different from pet rats too.

It depends on the type of science rat. They are bred specifically for genetic similarity and often specific features.

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AppropriateDark5189@reddit

If you see one in the subway for the first time, they can seem bigger than they are but they're really only about 2 lbs maximum weight. Most are a lot smaller. NYC has a large food supply for them which is heaven for scavengers.

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Texan2116@reddit

and this is my question...why does the city not aggressively address the food supply issue?

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BlazerFS231@reddit

It’s difficult. Most of the city doesn’t have room for dumpsters, so trash gets piled on the curb for collection the night before. That’s an easy score for rats.

Where there are dumpsters, they’re still very accessible to rats.

Last issue is that New Yorkers litter a lot.

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amethystmmm@reddit

I mean the average weight of an actual American house cat is like 4-6 lb for female and 5-8 lb for the males (bigger ones are crossed with some amount of Norwegian Forest cat and/or Maine Coon).

Common brown rats or "Norway rats" are up to a pound. They can be quite long though (up to 11 inches), so maybe a stretched out rat and a curled up cat?

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SkepticalJohn@reddit

Normal rats. Small people.

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Melodic_Pattern175@reddit

Fleas the size of rats suck on rats the size of cats …

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MobileOrdinary6827@reddit

I used to live in NYC. Some rats were fat, but never cat fat. Maybe young kitten size, but definitely not adult cat.

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orangorangtangtang@reddit

So i’m from nyc and i 100% have seen rats as big as master splinter. I assume it’s because they have access to so much trash that they grow bigger.

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No-Syrup-3746@reddit

They're about the size of a slice of pizza.

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Murderhornet212@reddit

I love pizza rat

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Adorable_Dust3799@reddit

NYC has Norway rats, aka warf rats. They're significantly larger than the brown roof rats we have in my area. But they're not cat sized.

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eyetracker@reddit

Brown rats are Norway rats. Roof rats are black rats.

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Adorable_Dust3799@reddit

Ty I'll edit

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shammy_dammy@reddit

"...the largest, well-fed individuals usually max out around 2 pounds, roughly the size of a small guinea pig..."

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wwhsd@reddit

It’s New York City, not the Fire Swamp.

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RedSolez@reddit

When I lived in Boston I legit once saw a rat that looked like the size of a small cat. But this was at night so perhaps my terror altered my depth perception 😂

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Order_edentata@reddit

I have been impressed by the boldness of rats in NYC (they will just go walking down the street) but not their size. What super impressed me was when I was in Central Park and a large beautiful hawk was perched on a low railing, and it hopped down to the ground and came back up with a normal sized rat in its talon. Then it flew up to a tree and perched in a branch. People went and stood below pointing their phones at the hawk. And I thought, don’t you know how he is going to eat that rat? Not nicely. I would not stand underneath. I watched him eat his lunch from a safe distance. Anyway that is some of the life of a rat in NYC.

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quitealargeorangecat@reddit

I saw a bodega cat bite a rat to death this morning. It was big but nowhere near cat size.

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PtZamboat@reddit

All the big ones get eaten by the alligators in the sewers.

Seriously though, no.

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boarhowl@reddit

Not if they have turtles to protect them

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HellYeahBelle@reddit

Turtles who learned from the big rats. Circle of life.

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LifeApprehensive2818@reddit

They're getting big again, as the gators are now getting eaten by the anacondas /jk.

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quitealargeorangecat@reddit

They’re pretty big but they aren’t cat sized! Bodega cats can catch them easily.

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No-Syrup-3746@reddit

Yes but bodega cats are the size of small horses.

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ATaxiNumber1729@reddit

And the small horses are the size of regular horses!

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DEdwardPossum@reddit

I was raised in a semi rural area, but grandparents lived in the city. I had always heard about the "giant" city rats, and eventually realized that the "giant rats" were opossums.

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jennyaeducan@reddit

Don't listen to all the liars on this thread, our rats are so big, they can eat babies whole.

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ForrestCryptid@reddit

They are rarely seen by everyday people, but an NYC plumber can tell you YES they CAN get that big. You can google many examples [pre AI] Heres an example of one

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XayahTheVastaya@reddit

Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist.

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No_Importance_750@reddit

Lmao no. They’re normal sized rats.

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shelwood46@reddit

The only enormous rat I've ever seen was in Chicago, and it was 20+ years ago. The ones in NYC are normal sized. It is an island, and as the residents of other port cities like London will tell you, water means rats.

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i-touched-morrissey@reddit

Vet here: adult cats can be as small as 5 lb. I’m sure there’s a 5 lb rat out there.

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honey_rainbow@reddit

Don't be so gullible

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No-Hedgehog-3212@reddit (OP)

I’m just curious🙁

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honey_rainbow@reddit

Again done be so gullible and believe everything you see on tv or the Internet, with that being said the answer to your question is no.

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No-Hedgehog-3212@reddit (OP)

Toxic Assumptions, toxic assumptions, until you finally answered “no”. Thats all I needed.

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honey_rainbow@reddit

Sweetie that wasn't toxic. If you think that was toxic..... NYC isn't the city for you.

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Bright_Ices@reddit

This one is huge: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/08/scabby-rat-union-labor-dispute-inflatable

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Status_Agents@reddit

Not cat-sized, but definitely on the larger side compared to typical rats

Cities like New York give them constant food supply and fewer natural predators, so they grow bigger and more confident around humans

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Bright_Ices@reddit

Rats are just bigger than most people expect. We had a rat come in through some opening under our nyc sink, and when my spouse tried to capture it in a bag, the rat ran through the bag, across the floor, up to the window sill, and through the open window, busting right through the window screen.

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Pitiful_Bunch_2290@reddit

Nope. They're the size of horses.

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Puzzled-Bench2805@reddit

New Yorker here, and no. They’re very much oversold. They’re just regular large rats. I’ve seen a few really fat ones, but they were still rat sized.

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old_Spivey@reddit

Are you coming on the Trump visa?

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Minute-Frame-8060@reddit

How big are your cats?

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jessek@reddit

Nope. They’re just regular sized rats.

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genericuser_12345@reddit

Rarely

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Catripruo@reddit

I think people are just shocked when they see how big rats are. But, no. They’re not as big as cats. Everyone likes a little hyperbole once in a while.

I’ve seen rats in Baltimore, Maryland, Wheeling, West Virginia, Nassau County, NY, and NYC. The city rats have access to a ready supply of food and shelter in the winter in buildings and subways. They are definitely bigger than the rats found in Wheeling.

Because New York City rats have such a steady food supply they can reach sizes of up to 12 inches in length, not counting the tail. That is a big rat.

If you really want to know — ask a NYC plumber.

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Real-Broccoli-9325@reddit

They might be fat because of how available food waste from the tonnnnns of restaurants is. But they really are just general rat-sized.

Lol, this made me think of Scott Westerfield’s Peeps series. A weird virus makes “Rat Kings” in the subway system.

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ubiquitous-joe@reddit

No. They’re unflappable, reasonably large, and not to be fucked with. I have seen one drag a wrapped slice of Kraft singles cheese into the bowels of the subway like it knew exactly how plastic works. But if you want cat-sized, you need those giant African bomb-sniffing rats.

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Xistential0ne@reddit

We have teensy weensy cats.

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Lunar_M1nds@reddit

Cuz there’s an abundance of trash available

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Ambitious_Ad8776@reddit

CW: images of dead rats
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/just-how-huge-are-new-yorks-rats
https://americanpaws.club/cats-and-kittens/average-cat-size/
"the average size of an adult rat caught in the study was around 200 to 250 grams. Those large rats, the 500 to 675 gram ones, were two to three times as heavy."
"A 675 gram rat, though—that’s a big rat. One and half pounds is about the size of a two-month old Pomeranian or of a small adult guinea pig, so it doesn’t entirely make sense that a 1.5 pound rat should seem so big. But it does. A one and half pound rat is chunky, and compared to many New York City rats, even a 500 gram rat, just over one pound, is a big rat."
Average house cat is "8-12 lbs (3.6-5.4 kg)
Access to easy food from dumpster allows so NYC rats to bloat to unusual size, but nowhere near that of an average cat.

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