Out of the plethora of MonsterQuest episodes I haven't written up, why pick "Giant Rats" to write about?  Well, because although they're not terribly interesting, their situation is: namely, lots of people report seeing them — yet there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support their existence… until now! Just kidding, there still isn't.

The Monster Quest team had a really neat idea: put a camera on a rat and let it go down into the rat-hole (literally) where it lives to see if maybe there are "King Rats" lurking deep under the city (you can guess which city they conducted this investigation in). There were only two problems with this idea: the cameras stuck out too much and wouldn't fit down the holes, and the rats were able to get out of the camera harness pretty much whenever they felt like it.

One thing they were able to confirm was the existence of piebald, or black-and-white rats. These were rumored to be the offspring of escaped laboratory rats (typically albino rats) which mated with wild rats. The result is a rat that has a two-tone coat of fur reminiscent of a cow. One rat exterminator that was working with MonsterQuest actually managed to catch one of these (alive) and showed it on-camera.  That was kind of cool.  It wasn't the mythical creature we were looking for, but it was a kinda-sorta myth confirmed.

No investigation of giant rats would be complete without interviewing homeless people who live in abandoned subway tunnels and storm drains, but how to arrange the interview?  MonsterQuest actually found a guy who is an "Urban Explorer" — basically, he goes into crawlspaces and explores areas where new buildings were built on top of old buildings, etc.  It's pseudo-modern-anthropology/archeology and mainly just something kind of interesting, exciting (and somewhat dangerous) to do.

This particular urban explorer apparently stopped and spoke to the folks he ran into in his explorations, which is kind of cool.  He introduced the MonsterQuest crew to one guy in particular who, although on the surface not the most reliable-seeming witness, seemed quite genuine when he spoke about the size of the rats he sees on a regular basis.  Basically, he said he saw rats the size of a small dog.  As outrageous as that seems, this is coming from a guy whom rats have likely tried to turn into dinner more than once. As other homeless folks mentioned, if you're showing any exposed skin while you're sleeping (and sometimes when you're not) rats won't hesitate to take a bite or three out of you.

In the end, of course, no giant rats were captured on film. What surprised me though, is that no one mentioned the potential culprit that I had in my head throughout most of the episode.  I live in a suburbs outside a major city known for rats (all of them are, actually; just ask an exterminator) and I know there are opossum around here. I've seen them dead on the road, occasionally. I've seen them in my yard, rarely. Once I found one that had fallen into my garbage can and couldn't get out.

These animals can look quite ratlike, especially the ones I've seen living in more urban environments. They're not rats, in fact they are the only marsupial (a word most often associated with Australia) naturally found in North America. It seems to me they would be the natural explanation for what people are actually seeing when they think they're seeing a giant rat — but for some reason MonsterQuest didn't explore this possibility.