Watch how easy it is for a rat to climb through drain pipes and up into any toilet bowl

Even flushing won't help you get rid of them.

(National Geographic)

This may not be the most useful or pleasant information to discover today.

Rats are incredibly flexible animals that are also excellent swimmers, thus making them the perfect creatures to sneak into residential sewers and climb their way up into your toilet bowl. Even if you flush, they will survive.

This video from National Geographic shows the disturbing dexterity of this most loathed of rodents.

Rats find it easy to make their way into sewers, crawling through grates and manholes from the street to begin their path to your bathroom. Their sharp claws mean they can scale any vertical surface. But what about the maze of bending pipes that make their way to the toilet bowl?

Well, rats' ribs are hinged at the spine, so they can squeeze through the tightest spaces once they've stuck their head through any shape or size of hole or opening.

Watch this video to find out more about next time you open your toilet seat, you could see a rat. This is not a horror film: it happens a number of times each year in Washington, D.C.