The black rat is catholic as to its diet, omnivorous, and it devours every kind of human food. It is more domesticated than its congener, more devoted to human habitations, and it does immense damage to stored grain, seeds, and cereals. It is a better climber than M. decumanus, which accounts for its being par excellence the ship-rat, since it can climb hawsers and more readily ‘comes on board.’ It makes its way up to the higher rooms of the tenement houses in Indian cities, where it nests and breeds undisturbed by the human inhabitants.
Day by day we passed them—
Met them unaware,
Shambling through the lobbies,
Squatting on the stair.
Not a rat among them
Moved to give us place,
Staring with its cruel eye
And its aged face.
(F. Langridge.)