Bolton Pest Control and Prevention assists the central sequencing unit of the animal and plant health agency with their anticoagulant resistance project. We do this by sending pieces of rat and house mouse tails to their laboratory for DNA testing. The results will show if the rats I have caught have any genetic resistance to the anticoagulants I use. This is beneficial for many reasons- one of which is knowing which rodenticides to use or not use with a certain rat population.

Three of these rats from a food recycling depot kindly donated their tails to science.

Results from the tails I sent in for sequencing.