City Rats Eat Meat. Country Rats Eat What They Can.

It’s been nearly 3,000 years since Aesop wrote “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse,” the fable in which an urban rodent exposes his rural cousin to the city’s superior dining options. A new study suggests Aesop was right about the geographical differences in rodent diets.

By analyzing the remains of brown rats that lived in and around Toronto between 1790 and 1890, researchers have determined that city rats enjoyed a higher-quality and more stable diet than rural rats did. Just as in Aesop’s tale, the city rats benefited from the largess of human waste, whereas country rats scraped by. Read more.