Next time you’re standing under a coconut tree, listen closely. You might hear a gnawing sound. Or you might find coconuts with a hole. Both can be caused by rats. Not exactly what you wish for in your holidays, but a great story for picmybug!
It’s not uncommon to see a rat on a tropical island. And this little rat from the Maldives, sitting in a palm tree gnawing on a coconut, taught me that rats not only eat trash! They had a life before humans settled.
The black rat Rattus rattus even prefers plant based food. It’s only the third mammal on my blog following cat and otter. Carl von Linné described it in 1758 in his famous 10th edition of Systema Naturae. He called it Mus rattus. Mus is a genus of mice, and as I asked myself what is the difference between rats and mice, I opened Pandoras box. Once again. Within the class Mammalia we find the order Rodentia. The family Muridae contains five subfamilies. One of them is Murinae, the murines. Rats and mice. There we face more or less 129 genera with approximately 580 species. Depending on who you ask. The rest is common names. Like crows and ravens, rats and mice are differentiated by their size. While crows and ravens are one genus, rats and mice are much more complex. Have you ever heard of shrew-like rats, earless water rats, or cloudrunners? All murines. Some have several common names, and what you call a mouse someone else might call it a rat.
And then there’s a story that sounds like a legend, or even a myth. But it is happening with an amazing regularity. Mautam and Thingtam may sound cute, but is quite the opposite. These regular events involve black rats and they are timed by the blooming of bamboo.
Melocanna baccifera (called Mautak) is the bamboo, and Mautam is the event that occurs every 48 to 50 years in South Asia. Read here how important the bamboo is to the region. It plays a vital role in the local people’s life. The forest is around 26.000 sqkm* big.
First the bamboo blooms. This only happens every 50 years. This might attract lots of locusts, so they are the first step. The following bamboo fruits are highly appreciated by black rats, which as result of the food supply multiply endlessly. One hectar of this bamboo can produce 83.6* tons of fruits, that makes 200 million tons. Now here’s the problem. Once the bamboo fruit supply is exhausted, the many rats will consume crops in such a way, that people run into a famine. Every 48 to 50 years. Not enough. There’s a second bamboo species, Bambusa tulda (called Rawthing), with the same phenomenon. This bamboo bloom causes Thingtam. Both phenomenon alternate, 18 years after a Mautam there’s a Thingtam, and 30 years after is the next Mautam. 2025 or maybe 26 will be a Thingtam again. The last Mautam was in 2006 / 2007. From what I could read people were much better prepared than in 1959, when thousands of people starved. Cutting bamboo before it blooms, saving grains for harsh times, and developing a more stable economy were part of the BAFFACOS, ‘Bamboo Flowering And Famine Combat Scheme’.
The Mizo people are an ethical group of approximately 1.4 million people in North Eastern India and surrounding areas.
Other regions with bamboo forests suffer in a similar way when the bamboo blooms. Since the plants die after blooming, an important resource disappears for months. Pandas are also effected.
*source: ‘Rodent outbreaks, ecology and impacts’ by IRRI, Singleton, Belmain, Brown, and Hardy.
Far up in a tree gnawed this Rattus rattus on coconuts.
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