A full-grown black rat, when desperate, can jump three feet horizontally and make a vertical leap of two feet two inches, and a brown rat is nearly as spry. They are greatly feared by firemen.

These small rodents, between six and eight inches long, look a lot like their rat relatives. But they're sleeker, with black ...

The Amami spiny rat, or Amami togenezumi in Japanese, which belongs to the Muridae family of the Rodentia order, is about 9 cm to 16 cm long and has spiny hair in its brown and black fur.