rat chews through food can ?

[arch007]

I have been storing food in cans and wonder if rats can chew through the can to get the food ?


I also store stuff in glass jars (mason glass jars).


Are all these safe from rats ?


Basically for long term food storage I have vacuum packed jars and cans.


Do I have to worry about rats and put jars, cans, etc in enclosed protected containers ?


Thanks

[Don C L]

Boy I would sure HOPE cans and jars would be safe from rats. Imagine the jaws and teeth on a rat that could chew through metal. But then again...

[Simi 60]

Can the rats read labels?
How would they know a can contained food?

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by arch007

Do I have to worry about rats and put jars, cans, etc in enclosed protected containers ?

Rodents such as rats have teeth that just keep growing. So rats need to wear away their teeth. And they do, by chewing.

Look at the etymology of the English word corrosion: it's ancestor is Old French c1300 corrosion, corroder, the action of gnawing, to gnaw.

And the Old French came from Latin corrosio and corrodere, to gnaw; from Latin cor-, together; + rodere, rodentem, to gnaw, to eat away.

** etymological note: we don't really know whether English corrosion, which showed up in print first in 1400, came from that Old French word or direct from the Latin. But it's likely from one of the two and the Latin root words rodere, rodentum are undeniably the ancestors.

So gnawing is what rats and other rodents do.

I've seen the aftermath of rats meeting electrical and data cables: pvc sheaths, even lead sheeting sheaths gnawed away.

And that's one reason why some underground cables have braided steel sheaths. The rats don't succeed gnawing through that, but they try.

As for a can holding food, I'd guess that unless the steel was rusting (and hence compromised) that the rat could not succeed penetrating it. But who knows? Steel cans are thinner and thinner each year.

There's another risk, however. And I only discovered it in SE Asia when visiting retail stores including supermarkets.

The labels of cans are printed so the can is "upside down" when the label is upright. The reason: cans are stored upside down. Including some local brands of soda pop.

Why?

It is assumed that rats run across the cans at night, when warehouses and stores are closed.

Rats are incontinent.

They pee whenever they want.

And rat pee contains some beasties you don't want to meet.

Including a bacterium named Leptospira. Which causes (and you can Google it at your leisure) leptospirosis or Weil's disease. Kidney failure, haemorrhage into the lungs, and death.

So you don't want to eat or drink from the top can on which a rat has peed.

Or, in the rainy season in monsoonal Asia, stand in flood water into which a rat has peed.

So store cans upside down (with the pop top or the lid down).

Given the number of rats in most any big city in any part of the world these days, I don't really understand why the upside down storage of cans is not universal. And hence the upside down label, which makes shelf-fillers display cans upside down.

Same goes for you and your jars and cans.

Rat pee on your can is much more likely than a rat chewing through the can wall.

[mickt243]

I have had rats chew through cans. My assumption is that they chewed for the sake of chewing (like Al says), but hit the rat jackpot when they got through the tin... made a helluva mess.

They were pretty determined- the cans they ate were in old combat ration packs, still sealed in the outer tin, so they went through a supposedly vermin resistant outer tin, several layers of plastic wrap and then the inner cans - they only ate the wet food from the cans, they did not eat any of the biscuits or dehydrated food etc (seems whatever preservatives they use also are rat repellent)

[sailorboy1]

If I even have a rat on the boat tough enough to chew through a can I will just open for it and make nice. Wouldn’t to get on it’s bad side

[jen1722terry]

Yeah, aluminum cans definitely. Thin steel cans, probably. Copper tubing, lead, anything other than a hard heavy metal.

I lived on a horse farm back in the 1970s (I don't like horses, the farm was a friend of the family).

Anyhow, they kept oats and something called "sweet food" (oats and molasses, I think) in stout steel bins with hinged tops. The critters would chew through anything else, even concrete. Fearsome.

Cheers

Terry

[taxwizz]

Faster than a speeding bullet.
More powerful than a diesel engine.
Able to chew through steel cans with his bare teeth.

It's....SUPERRAT

[TrentePieds]

Hm... How big is your boat? In ships, rats can find hidey-holes, but in a cruising sailboat???

I think you might be better shifting your focus, to wit, onto how how to keep your boat free of rats!

Rats CAN swim, but do not like to. So as long as your boat is not alongside, no rats are going to board your boat.

When you boat is alongside, they need some sort of passarelle, and means have existed for centuries to deny them the use of mooring lines as passarelles. Normal vigilance will keep them off you boat even where they are numerous ashore.

Should a rat get aboard your boat, precautions notwithstanding, the proper remedy is to kill it. A baited trap will be far more attractive to a rat than any can or jar. In the event that you do get a rat aboard, he will go to the trap because of the scent of the bait before he will have a go at any of your preserves and indeed before he will begin to gnaw on the boat's structure. As for your fresh (non-preserved) food there is no problem, since you'll be keeping it in the icebox/fridge where a rat cannot get in.

So why are you even worried?


TrentePieds

[taxwizz]

What is wrong with rats?

They are DELICIOUS. (So I am told)

[DockDoc]

"Rats will chew on anything that is not harder than their teeth. The Mohs Scale, developed by German mineralogist Friedrich Moh in 1812, measures the hardness of gemstones and minerals based on their ability to scratch another gemstone or mineral. The scale ranks from 1 (softest, such as Talc) to 10 (hardest, such as Diamonds). Rat teeth rank about 5.5 on the Mohs Scale, harder than iron or copper. Human tooth enamel only ranks about 5 on the Mohs Scale."

[TrentePieds]

Well - don't joke about it :-)

A few months ago a young lady frequenting a toney eatery in the principal tourist trap-cum-yuppie part of town in this 'ere world class city I called my home for many years found an entire rat in her soup! Nicely boiled. The Health Authorities closed down the restaurant, BUT...

...the restaurant had been buying in its dishes from a commissariat operating in a cellar location in the next door building. The commissariat was not closed down.

When this came to light the restaurant was permitted to open again, but the incident having been widely reported in the press, attendance was way down and the restaurant went belly up. Only some months later did the commissariat close down.

TrentePieds

[Kenomac]

We once had rats chew and scratch through our concrete basement floor to get in. Then when I mixed the mortar with crushed glass to fill the holes, they tried to chew and scratch through that, until the poison finally finished them off.

Rats will still be here long after humans are no longer on the planet.

[picklesandjesse]

Maybe an 8ft Carpet snake ( python ) would solve it. Common over here for solving a rat problem. Just don't look one in the eye and show fear. They are very good at picking that up.

[boat driver]

Rats and mice will invade a boat for a multitude of reasons, namely warmth and food availability . They can get into things and are particularly hard on rubber hoses , wires, and bedding material.
If the food source is adequate they do not leave.
Then come the snakes that eat the rat.
Shall the song continue ?

So keeping a boat shipshape and clean is goal one. Sealed food generally is safe, but plastic bags do have residue odor promoting chewing, etc.

Last, trap them.
Devon is great as well because it makes them search out water for dehydration.
I
Word of caution- the bilge is closer than the beach.....
Rat guards on dock lines are a deterrent but location awareness is probably better.
Seasonal out of water storage is the bigger opportunity for infestation and destruction. This is often brought on by a galley not well cleaned before storage or left over sealed packages of food.