Will rats leave if there is no food? Yes, but they won’t leave that soon though. Rats do come into our homes looking for food, shelter, and to give birth. The main reason they settle in our homes rent-free is because of our food. They are omnivores, so they literally eat anything and everything that we eat. Rats generally such a pain, causing havoc and destroying boxes and cartons of food in our homes. They tend to steal our clothes and nibble on our newspapers and books, all while crunching on our very own food.
They keep on moving locations, making it difficult for us to find and kill them. Even if they can’t have access to your food, they will still remain in your house for a week or so, looking for anything to feed on. Only when they are so done with the rummaging and chaos are they finally leaving, looking for somewhere else?
How Long Can a Rat Stay Without Food?
How long a rat would stay without food depends on what type of rat it is. There are many types of rat species that will live in and around our homes.
They range from home rats to wild ones living in jungles and forests. Normally, no rat can live for too long without food, and they eventually become very weak without eating anything.
Fortunately for us, the rats are mostly known to live only for a week without food. That’s a relief. Even if they try harder, they still can only hold on to two weeks without food. Not more than that.
These annoying little creatures can be very hard to deal with because they still manage to have food stored somewhere to nibble on. And they could live for long without water. Longer than having to eat food.
Will Rats Leave If there is No Food?
Yes, absolutely. But not before giving you a hard time. Rats usually do sneak into our homes for food. They just eat about anything they can get their tiny limbs onto. They eat from cereals, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds, and vegetables to anything.
Even if it is just scraps of what we eat left in the dumpsters, they are so notorious for leaving the crime scene after making a mess out of our food cabinets and storage spaces.
But if we keep our food tightly packed without letting them have any form of access to it. They will eventually leave starving.
These naughty creatures only leave when they can’t have access to food within 250 to 300 feet distance. So, these bad rodders are very unlikely to leave if they can manage to find food within the distance.
It doesn’t matter whether the food is coming from your neighbor’s home. They will nest inside your home, giving birth to more notorious rats infesting your home. So, if you’re planning to kick them out, starving wouldn’t be enough. You will have to use other pest-control techniques too.
What will Rats Eat If there is No Food?
Well, rats do love our food. But what will they eat if there is no food? They are definitely not going to throw a tantrum about it. Well, they eat a lot more than just what’s in our homes.
Rats, when they are forced to survive without food, tend to eat stuff like composting scraps, rotten food in dumpsters and streets, mushrooms, fungi, rotten vegetables, and animal carcasses, sneak into farms and eat vegetables like potatoes, radishes, and carrots, etc.
Some of the rat species that live wild in the sewers, unlike the black rats, eat worms, fish, mollusks, geckos, and even tiny birds.
They love eating insects and leeches too. So, if you happen to have slugs, snails, and plenty of insects in your yard or house, you’re going to have a hard time starving them. Better run to rat poison to have them out.
Can you Starve the Rats?
Starving the rats is a difficult job. It would only work if the rats won’t able to find anything else to eat but what’s in your kitchen.
When you don’t give them access to your food, with tight storage habits, they will eventually leave the house after several attempts to find food. They will disperse themselves to every nook and corner, looking for something to feed on. And eventually, you could see them disappear to some other place. But some rats adapt to other food coping mechanisms.
When you hide food from them, they start experimenting with other things they normally wouldn’t eat. For example, feed on rotten food, worms, snails, slugs, insects, or even from your neighbor’s garbage bins.
Some of them are reported to have been eating art supplies, wallpaper paste, pet food, other dead rats, animal carcass, vegetation, etc. only after they lose access to all of these other things will they leave your premise. Otherwise, no matter how much you starve them, they won’t leave at all.
How Do We Know If the Rats are Gone?
There are so many ways you could find out, to check whether the rats are gone. There are many signs of rat movement in the house when they are nesting. The tiny noises they make, especially when they have babies. You will stop hearing them anymore when they are gone.
These rats leave a lot of drops in the house when they live. Once the rats are gone, you don’t get to see or smell these nasty droppings except for the dry old ones left from earlier. In addition to it, you could also look for little smudges, nesting items like shredded paper, torn clothes, stolen socks, etc. if you don’t find anything new except what was already there, you have no rats.
These nocturnal rats scurry around, making scratch noises throughout the night. We tend to hear them crawling all over the place, dropping boxes, spoons, and plates on the counter and other kitchen cabinets. Suppose you don’t hear them partying around at night. They are more likely gone.
You could also get help from pest control to look for the rats in your house. They have different kinds of traps and rat poisons to help you check on the infestation.
Even you can set some traps with food in them to check for rat movements in your house if you don’t see any changes around your trap. Maybe they are gone.
Watch this one,
Video Credits – ThePetFAQ
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