Prisoners are always hungry and the food rations do not provide any protein. Therefore, they are desperate to catch and eat snakes, frogs, rats, or anything else within their reach. There is a certain species of rat with a dark line down the back. These rats are believed to carry a bleeding fever disease, so prisoners do not eat this species for fear of contracting the fever.

But rats are one of the rare sources of meat in the detention settlements and prisoners catch them whenever possible. Rats are often roasted, but some prisoners eat the animal raw, including the meat, head, guts, bones, and skin, to avoid detection by security officers. Rats have almost been entirely exterminated and are hard to find in all the settlements.