Losing the War Against Rats

The authors suggest that rats are among nature’s most perfectly adapted organisms. They closely shadow human settlements, but do so without being directly threatened–or seen–by humans. Consequently, these animals are also difficult to control or research.

The authors suggest that if researchers had greater access to private residences or businesses that would allow them to stow expensive scientific equipment and monitor rats in private, they might see improvements in pathogen surveillance, better understand population distribution, and importantly, test several novel control methods being developed by the team.

“They are the bane of urban environments, associated with poverty, disease, and fines by public health authorities” said Jason Munshi-South, co-author of the paper and associate professor of biology at Fordham University. “Business owners plagued with rats are reluctant to tell anyone, or to share their residences with researchers”.

One successful method the team has employed is providing free, confidential, extermination services to willing residences who will allow their rats to be studied before exterminated. However, it is a challenge getting this message out to owners. In order to spread the message, Michael H. Parsons, lead author of the paper and a visiting research scholar at Fordham University is also offering up to a $1,000 USD reward for information leading to a viable research site in Manhattan.

“We neglect to study them at our own peril”, added Parsons. “No war has ever decimated 1/3 of the human population. Rats have.”

Contacts and sources:

Daniel Luzer

Oxford University Press USA

The paper “Trends in urban rat ecology: A framework to define the prevailing knowledge gaps and incentives for academia, pest management professionals (PMPs) and public health agencies to participate” is available at: https://academic.oup.com/Journal-of-Urban-Ecology/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/jue/jux005