Rat Attack in India Set Off by Bamboo Flowering

....Throughout Asia, the bamboo plant is revered as a potent symbol of longevity and good fortune.

But in northeastern India's Mizoram state, there's one bamboo species, Melocanna baccifera, that causes dread. The plant flowers every 48 to 50 years, and its blooming brings tens of millions of hungry rats. After they devour the bamboo fruit, they consume crops, destroying entire fields—and local livelihoods—in a day or two.

The phenomenon, which occurred in Mizoram from late 2006 to 2008, is known in the local language as mautam or "bamboo death." Here, three adult rats venture out at night to feast on maize.


....Government officials in Mizoram's easternmost district offered a bounty in 2007 as incentive to kill the rats. Above, zoologist Ken Aplin (right) and James Lalsiamliana, a Mizo agricultural scientist, sift through a pile of some 30,000 rat tails presented by locals to qualify for the bounty.

The scientists estimate that at least 95 percent of the rats captured during this district's bamboo flowering were of the Rattus rattus species—more commonly known as black rats.