Rats rejoice as easy food helps Gothenburg’s rodent population to surge

Bad news for residents of Sweden's second city: rat sightings in Gothenburg have almost quadrupled in the last five years, according to a pest control company.

Published: 8 December 2017 08:53 CET

Rats rejoice as easy food helps Gothenburg's rodent population to surge

It's getting easier for rats to find food. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

Anticimex told newspaper Göteborgs Posten (GP) that the number of call-outs to deal with the rodents has increased by 390 percent in the last half decade.

“The number is increasing all the time. More and more people see rats above the ground,” Håkan Rystrand told GP.

So far this year the company has received 14,700 calls related to rats in Gothenburg. The corresponding figure for the first 11 months of 2012 was 3,700.

The main reason for the increase is more easily available food through poorly made bins, or food dropped and dumped.

Earlier this year, Anticimex and fellow pest control firm Nomor warned that Sweden's rat problem was hitting new heights, with both saying they were on course for a record year in terms of call-outs related to the animal.