Rats and mice are afraid of cats – that’s a fact that might have a few exceptions but holds true on most occasions.
Even without prior training, cats know by instinct that they should catch rats and mice. With their sharp claws and nimble bodies, cats find it easy to catch these smaller creatures.
Again, there are exceptions to the rule; and there are times when cats just don’t really care about the pesky little creatures or that these smaller ones are more clever than the felines and are able to escape without so much as a scratch on their lithe bodies.
Recently, one such rat made it big on social media after escaping death in the claws on a cat by doing something that no one expected it would do: play dead!
Photo credit: Animals Videos / Facebook
Now creatures like opossums regularly do this play dead thing to survive but this is probably the first recorded case of a rat using this survival mechanism to escape real death.
The video was quite funny, actually, because the rat even checks if the cat is still looking – most likely so it could stop playing dead and run away as fast as its little legs could carry!
The clip did not show the exact moment that the cat caught the rat but it seemed to be staring at a dead rat. Score: 1 cat, 0 rat.
But everything is not what it seems because the clever rat is actually just pretending to be dead. For the next few moments, this clever creature would take a peek to see if the cat was still on guard. Seeing that the cat was still there, the rat remained in ‘dead’ position. Score: 1 cat, 1 rat.
Whoever made this video did not really show the outcome of the cat-and-mouse situation but we could only guess that the cat caught the rat moving and pounced on it! Oooops.