The black rat—also known as the ship rat, the roof rat, and the house rat—is actually gray. It has large ears and a tail that’s longer than its body. The black rat (Rattus rattus) probably evolved in ...

For a long time, rats have taken the heat for the waves of plague that killed millions of people across Europe starting in the 14th century. A team of scientists from Norway and Switzerland are ...

It would appear that our hatred of rats for the past several hundred years may be due to a bit of mistaken identity. Scientists this week have published a paper which suggests that it wasn't so much ...

For hundreds of years, the arrival of the bubonic plague in Europe in the mid-14th century has been blamed on rats. However, a new study released this week has put a different rodent under suspicion: ...

Diane Nott, of Elyria, Ohio, holds a gerbil prior to the society's annual New England pageant Saturday, in Bedford, Mass. According to a new study, we may have been blaming the wrong rodent for the ...

New climate data suggests rats probably didn’t transmit the Black Death and murder millions – but gerbils are the perfect candidates. Rats have a pretty bad rap among rodents, and it’s largely thanks ...

WASHINGTON -- After nearly eight centuries of accusations for spreading the bubonic plague, scientists say they have compelling evidence to exonerate the much-maligned black rat. In the process, ...

The ancient city of Babylon had walls so thick, they couldn’t be breached. Ha-ha, the Babylonians could yell down at would-be invaders. No conquest for you! Alas for the Babylonians, their fortified ...

A rat peeks out of a hole near a subway stop in Brooklyn, New York, in 2005. Rats have long been blamed for helping to spread a plague that killed millions in 14th century Europe. However, new ...

WASHINGTON — After nearly eight centuries of accusations about the spread of the bubonic plague, scientists say they have compelling evidence to exonerate the much-maligned black rat. In the process, ...

Being a New Yorker, I'm something of a rat-spotter. And I'm an unsentimental one at that. The sight of a dead rat rarely rattles me, both because it's so familiar and because of the rodent’s ...

Show me a gerbil, any gerbil, and I will show you a homicidal rodent with an unquenchable thirst for blood, human or otherwise. I learned this valuable life lesson early on when Julie the Gerbil, the ...