The proliferation has left holes across 65,000km of Inner Mongolia, making it difficult for herders to ride their horses, whose hooves can get caught up, the official People's Daily newspaper said.
Authorities have launched a massive extermination drive, with more than 1,000 tonnes of poison dumped over the affected grasslands, an area the size of Sri Lanka, in an effort to control the number of rats.
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The population explosion has been caused by a rise in temperature since the start of May, as well as overgrazing, which suits the rats' natural habitat as they prefer to live in shorter grasses.
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