Breeding
The Long-haired rat is able to breed at any time of the year as long as food resources are available. The litter sizes vary from 5-10 however during a plague epidemic they are capable of reproducing at a rate of 12 young every three weeks. The gestation period ranges from 22–24 days and young rats generally reach sexual maturity at 70 days old.
Read more about this topic: Rattus Villosissimus
Famous quotes containing the word breeding:
“Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (18601904)
“Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (16941773)
“The Fashionable World is grown free and easie; our Manners sit more loose upon us: Nothing is so modish as an agreeable Negligence. In a word, Good Breeding shows it self most, where to an ordinary Eye it appears the least.”
—Joseph Addison (16721719)