Europa and Juan-de-Nova are two little coral islands in the Mozambique Channel. They are only occupied by a troop detachment of 15 men, who exercise the French sovereignty and maintain the island. During these activities, the men work in dampness and they can encounter rats. The aim of this survey is to show presence of leptospirosis in these islands by testing rat kidney by specific PCR. The r...

Present study was based on a parasitic survey of captured domestic rat (Rattus rattus) at five selected study sites including, Gampaha, Dalugama, Kadawatha, Sedawatte-Bloemandhal and Wattala,of the Western Province, Sri Lanka. Study also included examination of enteric parasite stages in fresh fecal samples of residents, domestic cats and dogs of the Sedawatte-Bloemandhal, a shanty area. Result...

This study is to detect the presence of Orientia tsutsugamushi in chiggers and host target organs of scrub typhus such as liver, spleen as well as blood. Nine locations of Peninsular Malaysia were chosen; Slim River, Perak; Janda Baik, Pahang; Seremban, Negeri Sembilan; Hulu Langat, Selangor; Raub, Pahang; Bukit Panchor, Pulau Pinang; Gunung Inas, and Ulu Sedim, Kedah and Setiu, Terengganu. Col...

Involving pericentric inversion, Robertsonian fusion and B-chromosomes , the black rat, Rattus rattus, is highly polymorphic. The polymorphism is also remarka ble by a variation of heterochromatic C-bands. R. rattus tanezumi, which is one of several subspecies of the black rats and distributes through Japan, is outstanding by polymorphism for the presence or absence of the C-bands (Yosida and S...

Food neophobia is a reaction to novel food observed in many animal species, particularly omnivores, including Rattus norvegicus. A neophobic reaction is typically characterised by avoidance of novel food and the necessity to assess both its potential value and toxicity by the animal. It has been hypothesised that this reaction is not observed in rats inhabiting a changeable environment with a h...

BACKGROUND The species of ectoparasites that live on a specific host in a geographical region form an ectoparasite community. Species abundance distributions describe the number of individuals observed for each different species that is encountered within a community. Based on properties of the species abundance distribution, the expected total number of species present in the community can be ...

In Experiment 1, hooded rats (Rattus norvegicus) were exposed to a novel diet in a food dish or on a conspecific; they were allowed to consume the same diet and then were injected with a toxin LiCl. Later both groups ate more of the novel diet than animals that had not been exposed, and the conspecific-exposed group ate more than the dish-exposed group. Reducing aversion learning by exposure on...

An analytical cross-sectional study of Capillaria hepatica in 307 Norway (brown) rats (Rattus norvegicus) was performed. Rats were trapped in two rural regions in Croatia. The prevalence of adult C. hepatica was 1.95%. The parasite was observed in 6 rats. Of these, 3 out of 189 (1.59%) were male and 3 out of 118 (2.54%) female. The adult parasite was a more common finding in large rats and was ...

A total of 1,618 ticks [420 individual (adults) and pooled (larvae and nymphs) samples], 369 rodents (Apodemus agrarius, Rattus norvegicus, Tscherskia triton, Mus musculus, and Myodes regulus), and 34 shrews (Crocidura lasiura) that were collected in northern Gyeonggi-do near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) of Korea during 2004-2005, were assayed by PCR for selected zoonotic pathogens. From a tota...