How do Ultrasonic Rodent Repellents Work?

Marketed as a humane and chemical-free way of repelling or driving-out rodents, ultrasonic rodent repellents are an electronically-powered device that send out noises that rodents and other animals find unpleasant. Many animals, particularly nocturnal ones, are sensitive to certain sounds and it is suggested that they will avoid an area in which these sounds can be heard, thus effectively repelling them from a home or building. 

Rodents can hear sounds that are of a much higher frequency than is heard and understood by the human ear, which means that the noise won't affect people in any way, but will still effect rodents. In theory, they are perfect to use in bedrooms or other areas of the home where lights and other rat extermination methods aren't viable. You could plug the machine in, turn it on, and sleep safe in the knowledge that the sound will drive any wandering rodents right out. 

Sadly, the reality is usually quite different from theory. 

Although humans are not meant to hear the sounds given off by these ultrasonic rodent repellents, many of them are audible and, in turn, annoying. It can be enough to keep someone up at night, or just distract them from doing other things. If that is the case in your household you may need to turn the device off, providing you with no barrier. When you have no barrier (the effectiveness of said barrier being argued to begin with), you have literally nothing to keep rats at bay. 

Of course, we are assuming that you don't have other pets in the household. If you have cats or dogs, you may find that their behavior changes when the ultrasonic rodent repellent is switched on, stopping this new pattern only when the device has been turned off. 

Ultrasonic rodent repellents are marketed as just that — a repellent. It is not a device that will kill rodents, and it is also not a device that can guarantee rodents will be evicted from your property. That's one of the biggest drawbacks with rodent repellents of all varieties … You have NO control over where the rodents will go, and where they will stay/nest again. You may repel the rodent population from one part of your home, such as the attic, only to force them into another, such as the crawl spaces between floors, or even in the cavities of your walls. 

Your home offers rodents and other wild critters everything they will need in order to flourish, and that's not exactly something that they'll be willing to give up without a fight. Using a repellent isn't usually enough to drive any animal from your home entirely, but they can occasionally work to drive them from a specific area. 

In most cases that we hear about these days, rodent repellents of the ultrasonic variety are not effective. There are home and property owners who swear by them, of course, but these seem to be the minority of cases. We wouldn't recommend ultrasonic rodent repellents to you as a viable method of rat extermination or control. 

If ultrasonic rodent repellents have no effect at all on the animals, they won't go anywhere. The problem is that you won't know about it. Not for a while at least. You'll assume the repellents are working slowly but surely, and it will only be after a few weeks when nothing positive has happened that you'll investigate further. At this point, you will usually find that you have more rats than you started out with, because they breed with each other, brother/sister/father/daughter or otherwise, and they do it damn quickly too. 



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