Share
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Video Gallery
New York City Street Rats
Rats thrive in New York City due to an ample food supply coming in the form of garbage left on the streets
(Page 2 of 2)
Despite the critters’ ubiquity, Curt Richter, a Hopkins neurological researcher who was one of the first scientists to become interested in the problem, had to solicit rat-stalking tips from a city sanitation worker. (Richter later recounted these trials in a memoir, “Experiences of a Reluctant Rat-Catcher.”) He soon realized that wild rats were craftier and generally harder to kill than their tame counterparts. By 1942, though, he had a squad of Boy Scouts dropping poisoned baits around East Baltimore, in the blocks near the School of Public Health. The new rodenticide, alpha napthyl thiourea (ANTU), proved effective: city workers once recovered 367 rat casualties from a single block. Unfortunately, the poison was not as harmless to other animals as Richter professed: domestic dogs and cats died and several local children had their stomachs pumped.
But the Rodent Ecology Project, as it eventually came to be called, thrived in spite of these setbacks, nurturing all manner of provocative ideas. Famed psychologist John Calhoun, whose rat colonies at the National Institute of Mental Health inspired the children’s classic “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH,” got his start in the alleys of Baltimore. (Interested in issues of crowding and social interaction, he eventually erected a quarter-acre rat corral behind his suburban home.)
Other project scientists began to map the basics of rat population dynamics, concepts that, Glass says, inform the way we manage endangered species today. Researchers noticed, for instance, that wiped-out blocks took time to repopulate, even though there were rats aplenty in all the surrounding blocks. Eventually, though, the rats almost always bounced back to their original numbers, the “carrying capacity” for that block.
Scientists even pinpointed rats’ absolute favorite foods; they relish macaroni and cheese and scrambled eggs and detest celery and raw beets. Their tastes are, in fact, eerily similar to ours.
Glass – who started off studying cotton rats in the Midwest – traps the animals with peanut butter baits and monitors the diseases they carry. (Hantavirus, once known as Korean hemorrhagic fever, and leptospirosis – which can cause liver and kidney failure – are of particular concern.) Lately he’s been interested in cat-rat interactions. Cats, he and his colleagues have noticed, are rather ineffectual rat assassins: they catch mainly medium-sized rodents, when they catch any at all. This predation pattern may actually have adverse effects on human health: some of the deceased mid-sized rats are already immune to harmful diseases, while the bumper crops of babies that replace them are all vulnerable to infection. Thus a higher proportion of the population ends up actively carrying the diseases at any given time.
Rats still infest Baltimore and most other cities. A few years ago a city garbage truck was marooned in the very alley we were touring, Glass says: rats had burrowed underneath until the surface caved in, sinking the truck to its axles. The rodents soon overran it, and its fetid load furnished quite a feast.
Even the poshest neighborhoods are afflicted: rats, Glass says, gravitate to fancy vegetable gardens, leaving gaping wounds in tomatoes. (Celery crops, one assumes, would be safer.) Recent surveys suggest that the rat populations of Baltimore neighborhoods haven’t changed much since the Hopkins studies began in the 1940s.
Yet we hadn’t glimpsed a single one on our stroll. Glass stopped suddenly in front of a junked-up yard and listened. “I didn’t see a rat, but I heard one,” he whispered. Rats – though adept at scurrying furtively – are actually quite vocal: they squeak, shriek and hiss. They also emit a series of high-pitched chirps inaudible to humans, which scientists believe may be the equivalent of laughter.
Comments
Eeeew!
Posted by Gordon on November 20,2009 | 10:57 PM
In past years I spent a great deal of time in Baltimore's seedier neighborhoods after dark. On one ocasion while sitting in a parked car at about 3:00 AM on a mostly desolate side street I had the opportunity to watch a group of very large rats feasting from an overturned garbage can. Oddly enough there were also several cats eating from this can as well. To make it even stranger, as one of the cats left the scene to cross the street it met with a very large rat coming across the street from the opposite direction. At the point of there meeting in the middle of the street the rat and the cat touched noses as two cats would do in greeting. stayed for a second as if summing each other up, and then passing without altercation. The rat going to feast in the garbage and the cat going on its way. I found this interesting as you might also.
Posted by Robert R. Miller Jr. on November 22,2009 | 12:35 PM
Last week I saw a program on rats--I am inpressed with the guys, but prefer to remain at a distance, thank you. There are rats in Africa that have been trained to detect land mines!! Did you know that rats can tread water for three days? Open REFRIGERATORS!! Have excellent problem solving skills--and are excellent jumpers. My dear little cat is an excellent mouser, but is quite small-a rate would probably catch her!
Posted by Elaine Parker on November 23,2009 | 03:44 PM
Some years ago in Portland, Oregon one of my daughters was given a tame white rat. A few days later she presented us with a clutch of little rats. Most of them were bi-color, grey on the front quarter, white behind. They were quite tame, but gave quite a start to some of my husband's friends whle in their cups, when they trotted out from under the couch.
Posted by Mazine Watts on November 23,2009 | 07:31 PM
During a very posh hotel's renovations the staff were moved to an imrpovised dining room in the basement. Thus one morning I found myself hunched over toast and coffee while not 3 meters away sat a small rat, munching a crust. We eyed each other and finished our breakfasts.
Posted by Shir-El on November 24,2009 | 03:00 PM
A couple summers ago, I was sitting outside at a local Baltimore eatery, when someone screamed, "Rat!" We all picked our feet up, the rat ran thru the eating area and on his way. We all put our feet down and went on our way of eating our lunch.
Sad, isn't it? You just get so use to these vermin co-habitating in your city.
Posted by suesue on November 25,2009 | 10:39 AM
This piece reminds me of my first personal encounter with a rat. Many years ago, I was delivering newspapers in Des Moines, Iowa. Traveling along a city street in the sultry early morning hours of a summer day, a scurrying creature moved across the road. It stopped mid-street, turned toward me, and stared. I recognized it for what it was, and was struck by its size, and the penetrating nature of its gaze.
Posted by magendie on November 27,2009 | 09:15 AM
I have currently a very bold female brown rat frequenting my back garden. She makes fascinating watching - a highly intelligent social mammal. I guess it wouldn't take much to get her to the point of being tame enough to approach. In terms of rat control, however, I've seen very little to compete with the effectiveness of a couple of jack russels doing what comes naturally.
Posted by Juliet on December 1,2009 | 08:08 AM
While traveling in Rome last year we were up early getting a taxi to a favorite tourist site when a huge rat appeared in the street near us. I was very happy to get into the taxi and shut the door. I wouldn't want to be any closer than I was to THAT particular Rat!
Posted by Marla Dahlk on December 3,2009 | 12:51 PM
I live in urban Baltimore. Concerning vegetable gardening, what I've done is grow a large crop of peppermint all around the backyard and am pleased to say that in the last three years I have not seen one rat bite on my backyard tomatoes. The peppermint idea came to me while I was studying a well established herbal book written by Maude Grieve. Also, I've read that rats will do almost anything to get to oil of rhodium. If there are appropriate cages to capture them in, I would strongly suggest the scientist try coaxing them in the traps with this oil. Of course, the scientists are probably already aware of the affinity of rats for this oil. I hope I have helped someone with my comments.
Sincerely,
Karma
Posted by Karma Finney on December 5,2009 | 10:07 PM
Why do they always say norway rats can reach the length of a house cat? If this was true,why has no one ever seen one that big on the news? The reason is simple,it's a myth and it's a shame it shows up here.
The average length of a norway rat is six inches and they might weigh a pound. They also wash themselves,so they really do not smell bad.
Posted by DM on January 22,2010 | 11:59 PM
you lose all credibility as either a scientist or a journalist when you state that rats can be as large as housecats.
you apparently have the typical imagination of a completely non-objective observer telling bar-room stories. this can't happen.
my rats are healthier and eat better and live longer than any street rat, and although i would love to see one grow to that size, it is just not going to happen. when they're overfed, they become obese, not giant.
in the wild, they rarely live 18 months; in captivity, they often live as long as 3 years, with a few exceptions which live a bit longer.
if you'd like to argue this point, please just show me some evidence; if not, maybe you should correct your article.
-bp
Posted by bill price on January 23,2010 | 12:28 PM
Instead of trying to kill clever rats with poison pellets why aren't "the powers that be" working on a rodent birth control pellet? Rats aren't at all stupid. They know to avoid that laced food that just killed their kin and the dog screaming with pain because the poison is a liquid activated acid that kills by liquifying the contents of the body cavity, or little kid who's mistaken it for yummy food when it's parents weren't paying attention at the park.
Posted by Shannon on January 24,2010 | 12:40 AM