Huffpost Science

In the event of a future mass extinction, rats may be the animals best suited to repopulate the world, some scientists say.

And if rats did “take over” after such a wipeout, they’d likely balloon in size, scientists also say.

Mass extinctions have hit the Earth at least five times in geologic history, most recently about 65 million years ago, when scientists think an asteroid hit the planet and wiped out the dinosaurs. Mammals took advantage of the newly available ecological space and ultimately repopulated and dominated the animal kingdom.