Rats Grab Lunch on the Wing

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Forget about Pizza Rat. Scientists have found Bat Rat.

The ever adaptable and clever brown rat has surprised researchers with its survival acumen yet again. This time, rats in Germany were caught on video camping out at urban bat hibernation sites and snatching the winged mammals out of the air.

Scientists there observed the novel hunting behavior between 2020 and 2024 and shared videos of the midair predation in a Global Ecology and Conservation paper. They also saw rats grab bats who had landed near the sites and found piles of bat remains, indicating instances of predation that they didn’t capture on video.

The brown rat, also known as the Norway rat, originally hails from Asia, but has made its way onto every continent save for Antarctica so far. And today they happily make their homes in a variety of domains, from woodlands to city sewers. Although they have a reputation as foragers (see: Pizza Rat), previous research has also documented them catching fish, lizards, and young birds as well. This is the first mid-air bat-snatching documented yet, however. 

The authors of the paper bemoan the negative ecological effects that rats have had on countless native species the world over, particularly by preying on ground nesting bird species. Their work adds evidence of disruption to yet another native fauna, one that plays the important ecological role of insect population control.

And there is another potential danger of this unique rat-bat connection: disease spread between the well-documented pathogen reservoirs. “Our observations suggest that it should be investigated whether and how these interactions contribute to pathogen dynamics in urban ecosystems,” they write.

Interactions between rats and bats don’t always go in the rats’ favor, however. Other recent research, published in BMC Biology, found that at one study site in Israel, sometimes bats attacked local rats instead.

As we pause to appreciate the majesty and wonder of bats during Bat Week, let us spare a thought for those members of Genus Myotis who eke out a living in their urban landscape as they contend with death from below at the claws of crafty rodent predators.

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Lead image: Global Ecology and Conservation

• Bob Grant

  Posted on October 28, 2025

  Bob Grant is the deputy editor at Nautilus.