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There's Something You Need To Know About "Shower Rat"

James Felton

James Felton

James Felton

James Felton

Senior Staff Writer

James is a published author with four pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.

Senior Staff Writer

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You've all seen the video of shower rat, the rat who loves to shower. S/he went viral a few days ago, because s/he looks like s/he's showering just like a tiny human and definitely thinks s/he's people.

The video went viral on Reddit and Twitter after it was posted on Youtube by Jose Correa from Peru. According to Jose, he walked into his bathroom on Saturday morning and found the little rat scrubbing away at itself in the sink.

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The rat carried on scrubbing away, completely uncaring that it was being filmed, the fluffy little exhibitionist.

 

Yes, it's cute and yes, the Internet had a lot of questions, such as:

  • Why's he showering like that?
  • Has he got a job?
  • A little rat job to go to?
  • Maybe he's a chef?
  • IS RATATOUILLE REAL???!

It's fair to say everybody loves the little rat who thinks it's people.

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It's adorable, and that definitely should have sent up warning signs that something wasn't right. This is 2018 we're talking about, where everything you love in life turns out to be terrible.

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Stop reading here if you want to carry on believing it's just a rat that came into a guy's house and casually started scrubbing at him/herself to wash away the stench of sewer/thug life.

We have bad news.

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Let's start gently. First off, it's not a rat. The fact that shower rat has no tail is a massive clue, as well as the fact that it was filmed in Peru.

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"With the large head size, bipedal position, flexible forelimbs, short stiff tail, and consistent coat color... this animal fits the ID of a pacarana," Dallas Krentzel, an evolutionary biologist, told Newsweek.

The way the animal is standing also fits with a pacarana, a native rodent of South America. 

Now for the hard bit – it's also probably not enjoying a shower. It's most likely trying to get an irritant off its body, whether it's soap or something else.

“A rat wouldn’t do that unless there’s something it really wants to get rid of. I think it’s soapy all over," Tuomas Aivelo, a biologist at the University of Helsinki, told Gizmodo

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"That’s probably a problem for the rat. It just wants to get rid of the soap.”

We're not sure how it got the soap on itself. Maybe it slipped on the soap, fell into the sink and in its haste to get the soap off it accidentally started lathering itself up. Or maybe the soap was placed on the animal.

"My guess is that someone soaped up that rat," Associate Professor Jason Munshi-South told Gizmodo. Poor little thing.

Gizmodo asked Aivelo if the rat was in pain.

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"It's totally possible," he replied, because 2018 is awful.


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