The city's complaint hotline is on pace for a record year of rat calls, exceeding the more than 24,000 over each of the last two years.

We had the chilling in the hammock cutely game going strong until Ham decided to yawn right at the camera.

Pippa approves.

My two rats, Pudge and Leeloo, sharing some fresh smoothie we made.

By using electrode implants to track nerve cells firing in the brains of rats as they plan where to go next, Johns Hopkins scientists say they have learned ...

Something fun and easy to do on a hot day - fill up a bowl or pan with cool water and toss in a bunch of frozen peas. Have fun watching the rats fish them out. My other rat, Leeloo, was being typically lazy and stealing them from Pudge instead of fishing for herself.

These are my ratties! :)

The pre-dawn silence at the foot of the Uluguru mountains is disturbed only by the cries of drowsy birds, the whisper of boots through grass and an intermittent clicking sound that is irresistible to 60 pairs of tiny, almost translucent, ears. When the sun finally rises over the blue peaks to flood the fields below, it illuminates one of the more unlikely scenes of human-animal cooperation.

Humans have been using the same rat poisons since the 1950s, and scientists are concerned that the rodents have developed a mutation that makes them immune. Reports this year suggest that rats in the UK are also becoming bigger, with a new strain of 'super rat' expected to outnumber humans by next year. Scientist Dr Dougie Clarke explained that female rats are able to breed again immediately after giving birth to their young, meaning that they multiply extremely quickly.