Remember Pizza Rat? Meet Pollinator Rat.

The birds do it. Do bees? It's also bees.

Rats pollinate plants. The brown rats that feast on garbage and steal slices of pizza in cities around the world may be the primary pollinators in urban settings according to a study published in June.

Carlos Matallana-Puerto, a plant Biologist at the State University of Campinas in Brazil, said that he was surprised when he heard about the stories. When I started studying, I realized that the thing makes sense.

In the hometown of Mr. Matallana-Puerto, residents have long reported seeing rats walking and perching in trees in the daytime.

The science of pollination took on a new meaning when he began studying it in college.

It wasn't a big deal to wonder if rats could be a pollination service. More than 300 species of mammals are pollinating. Some people call bats "mice with wings" because of their ability to pollinate fruit and vegetables. There are animals that help plants do their reproductive work.

Mr Matallana-Puerto watched the rats and observed that they were attracted to the plants. A mix of pineapple and guava is what they produce.

Mr Matallana-Puerto staked out 22 feijoa trees with a camera and binoculars to see what rats and other visitors did to the plants.

Mr. Matallana-Puerto could see from his bedroom window that the brown rat was the most popular animal to visit the flowers. He observed birds for 60 hours.

The behavior of the rats is odd if they are pollinating the plants. The majority of pollination by rodents takes place at night at ground level on plants with strong smells.

Rats feed on the feijoa flowers in the tree canopy during the day when the flowers are open and fertile, unlike in other parts of the world. The scientists theorize that this may be the first case where flower petals are the draw.

The petals are sweet according to Dr. Cardoso.

Rats don't seem to damage the reproductive parts of the flowers when they eat them. Instead, the rodents brush against the scores of scarlet stamens, which carry the pollen that could be transferred to another feijoa tree.

According to Jeremy Midgley, a professor of biology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, it is very unusual for a plant to have petals as a source of food.

The hypothesis had some reservations about it.

There was no information on how many flowers produced fruit after rats visited the plants. It would be nice if they could show rats how to do it.

Mr. Matallana-Puerto and Dr. Cardoso found previous reports of birds pollinating the feijoa plant. Rats may be more frequent in the city due to reduced bird activity.

The tale of rats and feijoa meeting in the city is not native to the country.

The rats arrived hundreds of years ago as a result of colonization, and the feijoa trees spread northward from their native Argentina.

Dr. Cardoso said that the two met in the South American country. They don't co-equip. They don't have a common history. They meet and their behavior allows them to communicate.