GET ready to praise your new giant rat overlords, as it looks like they will be inheriting the rule of the earth from humans in the distant future.

Dr Jan Zalasiewicz, a paelobiologist (someone who looks at old and new stuff to answer questions about evolution and history of life) said in an interview with Forbes that “given enough time, rats could probably grow to be at least as large as the capybara — the world’s largest rodent that lives today and can reach 80kg.”

This theory is based on these rats growing larger as the ecospace they live in gets empty from the growing number of larger mammals facing extinction.

“Ecospace is being emptied — and rats are in a good position to re-fill a significant chunk of it, in the mid to far geological future,” Dr Zalasiewicz said.

Rats are very versatile creatures, with the ability to adapt to any environment they find themselves in. They live in all corners of the world and have shown that it’s almost impossible to eradicate them, often driving other native species who they share the environment with to extinction.

This adaptation, combined with “adaptive radiation”, where a species can evolve to fit in vacant ecological niches, could eventually lead to our very distant human race being slaves to giant rats.

Hands up who’s looking forward to that.

Originally published as Giant rats to take over earth