New food baits for trapping house mice, black rats and brown rats
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| Authors: | Takacs, S; Musso, AE; Gries, R; Rozenberg, E; Borden, JH; Brodie, B; Gries, G |
| Year: | 2018 |
| Journal: | Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 200 Article Link (DOI) |
| Title: | New food baits for trapping house mice, black rats and brown rats |
| Abstract: | We have recently developed new food baits (SFU Mouse Bait, SFU Rat Bait) for trapping granivorous house mice, Mus musculus, and black rats, Ramis rattus, and for trapping omnivorous brown rats, Rattus norvegicus. Both baits contain synthetic long-range volatile food attractants that represent favourite rodent foods. They draw foraging rodents to the baits where feeding stimulants induce feeding on them. Our objectives were to test the SFU Baits in comparison to three commercial mouse and rat baits, and peanut butter on trap captures of wild house mice, black rats and brown rats. In paired-trap experiments, traps baited with the SFU Mouse Bait captured (i) 6.6 times more mice than Provoke (R) Mouse (P < 0.001), (ii) 3.4 times more mice than Liphatech (R) (P < 0.05), (iii) 6.3 times more mice than Propest (R) (P = 0.001), and (iv) 3.4 times more mice than peanut butter (P < 0.05). Traps baited with the SFU Rat Bait captured (i) 5 times more brown rats than Provoke (R) Rat (P < 0.01), (ii) 3.5 times more brown rats than Liphatech (R) (P = 0.01), (iii) 12 times more brown rats than Propest (R) (P < 0.01), and (iv) 3.4 times more brown rats than peanut butter (P < 0.001). In a trapping location co-inhabited by both black and brown rats, traps baited with the SFU Mouse Bait captured 13 black rats (P < 0.01) and 5 brown rats, whereas traps baited with SFU Rat Bait captured 1 black rat and 25 brown rats (P < 0.001), revealing species specific differential attractiveness of these two baits. The superior performance of the SFU Mouse and Rat Baits is apparently due to the combination of their food attractant blends and their grain-based feeding stimulant matrix. When combined with novel rodent pheromone and sonic technologies, and possibly self-resetting traps, the SFU Baits have the potential to make rodent trapping as effective as rodent poisoning. |
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