For thousands of years they have been causing damage to crops, stored grain and infrastructure, and are reservoirs for devastating human diseases such as plague and typhus. The bones of rats and mice are found along with human bones from the mid-Pleistocene (1–2.5 million years ago). Rats and mice subsequently radiated throughout the world. Rodents continue to cause serious damage to staple food crops such as rice (John 2014), despite advances in methods of control and management techniques.