# Could real wild rats behave as rats do in Dishonored?



## ReptilesAndRats (Dec 3, 2013)

[ not sure if this would go here or the lounge? ]Alright, so there's this game called Dishonored; great game, love it.But, centered around a plague called the 'rat plague' ( http://dishonored.wikia.com/wiki/Rat_Plague ) with rats spreading it to people and also the in-game rat behaviour, I was very curious-Could real rats act like these fictional ones?For those who have no played Dishonored, the rats do the following:Move in large groupAttack humans for a food source ( could this be 'plague' affecting them? ) And pffth course as the above implies, feeding off if human corpsesDue take note: if the rats in-game are not in a group of at least four-five, they run off instead of attackingFor symptoms on humans with the fictional plague, check the link I placed in the first part of this post.This is open for discussion and figuring out if such could be possible if such a dealt plague was around.I personally feel unsure, though lean towards a ' hey, maybe they could behave like this in such conditions'.


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## bazmonkey (Nov 8, 2013)

There are real rat plagues in India. Every ~50 years (40-something), a particular bamboo species flowers all at once. Black rats can go from mating to weaned babies about a week faster than any other rodent around, so their numbers skyrocket with all this awesome bamboo fruit around. Once it's all gone, the now-starving population of rats gets driven down into villages where they strip entire fields down to stems. It's called Mautam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautam).

I don't think rats could coordinate themselves enough to mob down people in a hunt.


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## ReptilesAndRats (Dec 3, 2013)

Very interesting! And well, I do realise there are real plagues spread by rats and other rodents but I mean with the same symptoms?And perhaps so. But I do recall there have been of course single rats going and attacking people?


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## bazmonkey (Nov 8, 2013)

No, not the same symptoms. These are just huge starving groups of rats running around eating. If people weren't around, they'd just starve right after Mautam and that would be it. The good-ole' Black Death had a lot of those symptoms, minus the zombie-ish part. It didn't involve particularly huge numbers of rats, just rats that were now able to travel a lot further (via trade routes) than before. It also didn't involve rat attacks at all, but rather fleas the rats harmelessly carried.

And yeah, single rats can attack a person but it's not their forte. If it was widespread and we really had to like, band together against the rats, we'd win. We could breed cats and ferrets and terriers en masse. We can spray pesticide over very large spaces when we want to. 

All that aside, why would a disease want to cause zombie-like symptoms AND plague-like symptoms from an evolutionary standpoint? If the disease tries to proliferate by taking over hosts and controlling their minds, why would it also develop to kill the host, ruining the goal of infecting a person? And if the disease worked by killing the host and then spreading via the air, affecting behavior would actually provoke people to keep their distance and stay back, ruining the goal of spreading the diease. The combination of mind control and death doesn't make sense for the disease. It's not helpful.


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## ReptilesAndRats (Dec 3, 2013)

Ah, okay. And I am aware of the bubonic plague and it's symptoms as well as the spread. Too bad humans then were blaming dogs and cats, killing them off and worsening the spread. And I agree with your second paragraph/statement. And for the finale statement, I agree somewhat? ( also, excuse me not paragraphing, I am on my phone that does not work very well) But with death it may bring animals to eat the corpse possibly. Along with the zombie like actions, this would cause the person to just kind of wander through those town, ect, and also have to be removed from the town causing contact between peoples. And in the end, another bonus with the massive deaths spread wise is well, the government has to remove the bodies which also causes contact.. Aside from this. In modern time rats getting so out of control would be impossible, but what about in times like when bubonic was around? Hm.. Like, what ID instead of it having been bubonic, it was this fictional plague?


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## bazmonkey (Nov 8, 2013)

All I know is that in the real world, it's every species for themselves, and rats occupy the place they do. If they were somehow able to take over like that, it would have happened.


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## ReptilesAndRats (Dec 3, 2013)

Agreed.Thankyou for having such a interesting conversation with me Bazmonkey! : )


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## bazmonkey (Nov 8, 2013)

Always fun to "what-if".


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