California Invaded By A 3-Foot Rat-Like Creature

The economic and public safety of California is in jeopardy due to an incursion of hazardous three-foot-tall, rat-like monsters with orange fangs.

Nearly 1,000 nutria—one of the largest rodent species—had already been hunted down in the Bay Area this year.

But the creatures have now made their way into Contra Costa County’s California Delta, which is one of the state’s most crucial water sources and ecological sites, the San Francisco Chronicle has reported.

The creatures, also called Coypu, are about 20 pounds in weight and are dangerous to people, animals, and pets. They also wreak havoc on wetlands.

They are known to harbour septicaemia and TB, two potentially fatal illnesses, in addition to being tapeworm carriers. According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, they also carry blood and liver flukes, which can cause illness when exposed to polluted water.

Nutria look similar to beavers, with the distinction of highly arched backs and ‘long, thin, round, sparsely haired tails rather than wide, flat tails like that of a beaver,’ according to the CFWD. 

The rodents have big, bright orange teeth, a white snout, and whiskers. They are typically found close to permanent water sources.

Since the first nutria, a pregnant female was discovered on a private wetland in March of 2017 in California, 5,042 of the species have been killed in the state. 

Officials are urging locals to ‘immediately’ report and photograph any sightings or potential signs of their presence to their state wildlife department. 

California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Peter Tira told SFGate: ‘We cannot have nutria reproducing in the delta. The threat to California’s economy is too great.’

The animal’s prodigious reproductive rate—females can give birth to as many as 27 pups annually—makes the spread especially concerning.

Additionally, they reproduce all year round, yielding two to three litters, each containing two to nine young.

Furthermore, there isn’t a single natural predator controlling the population.

The list of forbidden species in certain jurisdictions, including California, forbids the importation, ownership, trade, buying, selling, or transit of rodents.

It is legal to shoot the animal outside of city limits or wildlife control officers can kill them using humane euthanasia. 

The highly destructive species is known to cause significant losses in crops and weaken levees due to their burrowing. 

The unique and endangered plants and creatures that depend on the wetlands are also at risk due to their impact on ecosystems.

A rodent native to South America, the nutria, sometimes known as the coypu, is a member of the spiny rat family.

Originally native to subtropical and temperate South America, they were brought to North America, Europe, and Asia by fur farmers. They reside in burrows by bodies of water and eat the stems of river plants.

They’re still hunted and trapped for their fur in some regions, but their destructive burrowing and feeding habits often frustrate humans, and they consider them an invasive species in the United States. They can also transmit various diseases to humans and animals, mainly through water contamination.