Well...I've seen some big rats in my days (we have Norway Brown Rats here on the US east coast), but this specimen from London is amazing:
A gas engineer has told how he discovered a rat bigger than his dog as he worked at a block of flats.
Tony Smith, 46, spotted the dead rodent in a bush near a children's playground while working close to Hackney Downs in north London.
He believes it weighs more than 25lb - and is "about 4ft" long with its tail, although this would easily put it on a par with the largest known rat species in the world.
"This is the largest rat I've ever seen in my entire life," he said.
He took a photograph of his friend James Green, an electrician, holding up the supersize rat to the camera.
Mr Smith added: "I've got a cat and a Jack Russell and it was bigger than both of those."
He said bins are often left open near the estate where he has been working so "these little fellas have a pretty good diet".
Guinness World Records does not have a record for the longest rat, but it said the largest known species of rat is the slender-tailed cloud rat found on Luzon, an island in the Philippines - the tree-climbing species has a body length of up to 3ft 3in.
According to the British Pest Control Association (BPCA), there are two species of rat in Britain - the common brown rat or the rarer black rat.
Its website says: "The brown rat is the larger of the rats in Britain, often weighing over half a kilo and measuring about 23cm, without counting the tail."
The BPCA's latest figures show there were 196,012 pest control call-outs involving rats in the UK in 2013-14 - a drop of 30% on the previous year. - Giant Rat 'Bigger Than A Dog' Near Playground
Guinness World Records: Incredible Animals!
Natural History Museum Book of Animal Records
The World's Longest Snake and Other Animal Records (Wow!)
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