How rats can swim up to your toilet

A public nightmare

It is a common and unbelievable nightmare: a rat in a toilet. It’s not the plot of a horror movie. but something may really happen.

Rats are usually good swimmers. They use their legs, and their long tails as rudders to steer them in the right direction. In addition, certain species can tread water for up to three days and hold their breath for three minutes.

However, rats don’t deal well with being hungry, so when food gets scarce, they look for new places to dine. Naturally, the sewer offers easy access to your drain pipes and the food in your home. Moreover, rats eat fecal matter if other food sources aren’t readily available. Combining these factors with the fact that rats have hinged rib cages and sharp claws makes it easy for them to access your home through narrow pipelines, even in a vertical direction. Once their head passes through a hole, the rest of their body can squeeze through. That’s how they can end up in the toilet bowl.

You may think that the only people who need to worry about rats in the toilet are residents of metropolitan areas, but that’s just not true. Sewer rats can be found anywhere with indoor plumbing, as long as the diameter of the drain system is large enough for the rats to fit through.

National Geographic made a video showing how rats can move from sewers to toilets easily.