An agile climbing rat that uses trees and high parts of buildings.
Its ears are relatively large and the tail is usually longer than the head and body. Coat colors include black, brown and gray.
On Minami-daito, black rats built dome-shaped nests from broad grass leaves in trees lining sugarcane fields. Sugarcane covers about 60% of the island; researchers surveyed nests from 2002 to 2006. In 2005, they found signs that rats had remodeled 29 of 128 Bull-headed Shrike nests (22.7%): some had nesting material removed, others were turned or reshaped into domes.
In 2006, researchers recorded two cases in which rats occupied shrike nests before egg-laying and the birds abandoned them. Black rats built their own arboreal nests and also used the birds’ open cups for resting or raising young. The study argues that island bird conservation should consider this competition for nesting places as well as predation.
IUCN Bangladesh Red List of Mammals · Least Concern (LC) · Bangladesh national assessment
The 2015 IUCN Bangladesh mammal Red List assessed the black rat as Least Concern (LC) within Bangladesh, citing its wide national distribution and abundance. On Minami-daito Island, researchers recorded black rats remodeling Bull-headed Shrike nests and occupying two nests before egg-laying; the shrikes abandoned both.