UK’s super-sized rodent woes: Rat as large as a cat caught in England
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The rat caught in North Yorkshire was around 56cm long from nose to tail.
PHOTO: DAVID TAYLOR AND STEPHEN MARTIN/FACEBOOK
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A rat the size of a cat was caught in a town in North Yorkshire, England, rekindling concerns about the spread of super-sized rodents across Britain.
“I had to do a double take when I saw a picture of it,” Mr Stephen Martin, a Conservative councillor in Redcar and Cleveland, said in a Facebook post on July 28. “You can tell by the size of the bag that it’s not a normal size. It’s the size of a cat.”
Mr Martin said the rat was about 56cm long from nose to tail, about the length of a carry-on piece of luggage. It was caught inside a home in Redcar and Cleveland’s Normanby district.
He posted another photo on Aug 4 showing “rat holes” in a yard.
He said this was “not a one-off”.
Mr Martin told The Guardian that his town no longer provides pest control services to private residents due to budget cuts, and added that there is more rubbish on the ground as more housing estates have been built, and people throw their garbage willy-nilly.
“It is attracting more rats, and they are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” he said.
He said his town was invaded by giant rats two years ago, and that was dealt with effectively.
“Now, the rats are back, and in even greater numbers,” he said.
Mr David Taylor, also a councillor at Redcar and Cleveland, said “the problem is UK-wide”.
A rat surge was reported in Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, after a garbage truck workers’ strike
A new report cited by online news aggregator Inkl said more than half a million rat infestations have been reported across Britain in less than three years.
Responses from city councils showed that the country saw 518,240 rat infestations from 2023 to mid-2025.
Nearly a quarter of these were in London alone, closely followed by the north-west of England and Scotland, which recorded almost 95,000 and 70,000 infestations, respectively.
Veteran pest controller David Parnell wrote in The Independent: “The UK has created a perfect storm for rats: poor waste management, exploding takeaway culture, weak sewer infrastructure and water companies failing to maintain ageing systems.
“Add to that a society that’s seemingly forgotten the basics of hygiene and waste disposal, and the result is a rodent crisis on a scale I’ve never seen before.”
He warned: “The rats are getting bigger, bolder and harder to deal with.”
