The diet of the long-haired rat is not fully understood.

The long-haired rat is able to breed at any time of the year as long as food resources are available.

Long-haired rats are nocturnal and their activities seem to be influenced by the amount of moonlight.

Long-haired rats rely on dense vegetation or burrows for shelter.

The long-haired rat is subject to a high level of predation from a number of predators.

The distribution of the long-haired rat can vary depending on whether or not the population is experiencing an eruption.

While they are largely herbivorous, the long-haired rat is thought, at times, to be carnivorous and even cannibalistic.

Although this species hunting is little known, the most common prey is the long-haired rat and the cane rat.

Long-haired rats typically occur in temperate, sub-tropical, desert and hummock grasslands regions.

Its principal prey is the Long-haired Rat, Rattus villosissimus.

The long-haired rat can be distinguished by its very long, coarse guard hairs that form an outer layer to protect the softer underfur.

The ravenous rodent in question is Rattus villosissimus, aka the long-haired rat, aka the plague rat.

The long-haired rat (Rattus villosissimus), is a species of rodent in the family Muridae which is native to Australia.

Other mammals known from the site include: the northern nail-tail wallaby, agile wallaby, long-haired rat and Kimberley rock rat.

Most of the research on the long-haired rat has been conducted during times of massive population fluctuations and therefore little is known about their biology in a non-eruptive period.

The long-haired rat is well known for its population eruptions over vast areas of Australia which is the basis of its alternative common name, the plague rat.

The long-haired rat is not listed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999.

These include burrowing frogs that emerge to breed in the mud and the long-haired rat which erupts in huge numbers after the monsoon and spreads across the grasslands.

"A run of good seasons in much of Queensland has provided plenty of prey, such as the long-haired rat, and resulted in a boom in cat numbers," he said.

Native rodents, such as Forrests mouse and the long-haired rat, search for food among the clumps of tussocky grass, while overhead letter-winged kites scan the ground for unwary rodents or hare-wallabies.

It contains more than half of the plant species normally found in Mitchell grassland and most of the animal species, including several reptiles, the flock bronzewing pigeon, the red-chested button-quail, the Australian bustard and the long-haired rat.

In continent-wide examinations, 80% of the diet of wild dogs consisted of 10 species: red kangaroo, swamp wallaby, cattle, dusky rat, magpie goose, common brushtail possum, long-haired rat, agile wallaby, European rabbit and the common wombat.

Less information is known about the distribution of the long-haired rat in a non-eruptive period however it is known that they can spend only 13 days without green vegetation and water therefore their distribution is thought to be much more restricted and centered around water and food sources.

After a period of rain when water and food resources are widely available, the long-haired rat has been recorded to have a distribution of up to 130,000 square kilometers across New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and the majority of the Northern Territory and South Australia.