Turns out the panicking 'rat' wasn’t taking shower in viral video

A video of a 'rat' taking a shower like humans immediately took the internet by storm, but it turns out that the creature in the video is not even a rat and it was not even taking a shower.

The video of the ‘Shower Rat’ was captured in Peru, in which a rat, standing on its hind legs in a drain, is covered in soap and is rubbing its body as if it’s is showering like we do. People found the video cute and funny and started sharing it, making it viral within no time. However, firstly, it’s not a rat but a rodent, secondly, it wasn’t taking a bath.

Video Credits: Jose Correa

The animal is a pacarana, which is a type of brown rodent from South America. Tuomas Aivelo, who studied rodents, clarified that soap is unnatural for rodents as they are not familiar with it and would not make such human like movements unless they want to really get rid of it.

According to The Independent, rodents need a layer of fur to protect them from dirt or moisture and this encounter of dirt keeps the fur cleaned, thus, covering it with soap would actually make the rodent dirty. Aivelo explained that the rodent had panicky movements because it was not capable to removing the soap off easily.

Dallas Krentzel, who also studies rodent diversity, explained that the animal in the video is bigger and has larger face as compared to a normal rat and also does not have a long tail like rats. He noted that this kind of washing is not normal for rodents and is rather unsafe and inhumane.

He explained that the rodent could copy human movements because ‘it needs that forelimb mobility for foraging and food processing’. In an interview with Newsweek, he said that another thing pointing out to the fact that it is a rodent was because the video was shot in Peru and pacarana are originally born there.

The video was posted by a YouTube user Jose Correa on Sunday under the title ‘Rat taking a shower’. It gathered more than 800,000 views and reposts on social media site Facebook collected over seven million views.