Black rats arrived in Florida with European shipping centuries ago, and unlike most of the state’s introduced mammals, they’re skilled climbers that favor trees, dense vines, and building rafters over burrowing at ground level, a habit that separates them from the more terrestrial Norway rat. Florida’s roughly 880 records scatter thinly across Canaveral, Big Cypress, Paynes Prairie, and Everglades National Park, just one named sighting at each, showing geographic reach rather than any single stronghold.
Records peak in April and stay reasonably steady the rest of the year, never dropping much below 50 a month. Florida classifies the species as introduced rather than assigning it a wild conservation rank, and detection around buildings, camps, and visitor areas likely shapes where sightings cluster more than any true difference in how many rats live across the state’s unsurveyed ground.
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