Of Rats and Men (2022)

[0] Hey, everyone.

[1] Run here.

[2] I am not a fan of rats, to put it lightly.

[3] And yet they seem to be everywhere I go lately.

[4] And it turns out, it's not just me. I just saw a news report showing that rat sightings in New York City doubled over the last year.

[5] I had to know what was going on.

[6] All right, okay, so are you ready for this?

[7] Yes.

[8] All right, so we're walking.

[9] It's a nice day today.

[10] Very sunny.

[11] Surprisingly, no rats yet.

[12] No rats yet.

[13] In sight.

[14] Because there's street sweeping, apparently.

[15] Yeah, but I'm sure that's going to change once we made up with Bobby.

[16] Bobby Corrigan?

[17] Yeah.

[18] Radinologist?

[19] Rodentologist.

[20] Yeah, yeah.

[21] All things rodents.

[22] It took a while, but eventually I convinced through -line producer Lawrence Wu to go with me on a New York City rat safari.

[23] See the left, look to the right.

[24] Any rats, no?

[25] Well, just wait, just wait.

[26] I think about rats a lot, like an unhealthy amount.

[27] Yeah, run talks about rats all the time.

[28] Yeah, yeah, I'm sort of the rat lady of through line at this point.

[29] But how can I not think about them?

[30] I live in New York City, in Manhattan, right next to this small empty plot of land where a brownstone once stood, that's now basically a rat condominium.

[31] They hang out on the sidewalk, they jump out from behind my trash can, they run up and down the curb, They're often the first thing I see when I leave my apartment, and the last thing I see before I walk into it.

[32] At night, 100 % hands down, you walk, it's like a party.

[33] Whether or not you live in New York City, you've probably encountered a story or two about rats, especially during the early days of the pandemic.

[34] Warning this morning from the CDC, watch out for hungry and aggressive rats.

[35] We had been seeing reports from around the country that rats were on the move, and you might start seeing them in areas where they had not been a problem before.

[36] In homes, garages, and even cars.

[37] Boston City Council said they're getting increased rat reports from nearly every neighborhood.

[38] It's absolutely disgusting.

[39] Large rats climbing all over a Bourbon Street pizza counter.

[40] Rats.

[41] That's what they're saying in San Francisco after rodents moved into a playground and parents want those rats gone.

[42] Aristotle once theorized that nature abhors a vacuum.

[43] During the pandemic, as humans retreated into their homes, the natural world, reclaimed some space.

[44] And rats, well, they're especially good at filling a vacuum.

[45] That's arriving.

[46] And what's more, these rats seem to have gotten an attitude.

[47] Trust me, even if you don't think you care about rats, we are going down the subway station.

[48] By the end of this story, I guarantee you will.

[49] I'm Randa de Fattah, and on this episode of ThruLine from NPR, we're investigating the hidden life of rats.

[50] Our rat safari was set to begin at Collect Pond Park, a small one -square block park in New York City's Chinatown that was once the site of a pond, and later a jail.

[51] But nowadays, it's home to a whole lot of rats.

[52] So it makes sense that's where Bobby Corrigan, rodentologist, and rat safari guide, asked us to meet him.

[53] Hey, Bobby.

[54] How we doing?

[55] Good.

[56] Bobby grew up loving nature.

[57] He'd spend hours watching and studying the bugs in his backyard.

[58] He says he always knew he was destined for some kind of environmental work, but that he stumbled across rats by accident, in a barn.

[59] The rats in his barn.

[60] I just sat there for a couple hours one day, and I'm watching him do all these things.

[61] I said, you know, I've got to know more about this animal.

[62] And the more I studied them, the more I realized, you know, this is awesome.

[63] Rats became a lifelong passion and profession for Bobby.

[64] These days, he's a scientist who helps companies and local governments rein in their rat problems.

[65] retracing rat footsteps, figuring out the hot spots, coming up with solutions.

[66] Although he admits it doesn't make him the most popular dinner guest.

[67] You know, you're holding a classic wine glass in your hand.

[68] Well, what do you do for a living, right?

[69] I used to say, well, I study rats in cities.

[70] And you could just see people like, they do this.

[71] Like you have rats in your pocket or something.

[72] Yeah, and you'll say to their spouse, hey, you know what, we need to refill our, and it was great talking with you.

[73] I'm sure some of you were thinking.

[74] thinking, yeah, I definitely try to get out of that conversation.

[75] Why would I want to hear about rats at a party?

[76] They're gross, they're creepy, they sneak around at night with those long tails and daggers for teeth.

[77] And from where I sit, anybody who thinks otherwise has only ever encountered a rat in Ratatoui or the Rats of NIM.

[78] And there's been really good studies recently out of Vancouver University of British Columbia, showing the mental stress rats cause on us.

[79] It's very significant.

[80] Some people just can't sleep a night You know, they stress if they see a rat They can't concentrate during work It's a big deal It's a big deal Yeah, you might be in there I think I went through that Honestly like I was like Because I was seeing so many rats I think I was feeling that anxiety That stress of being like I can't escape them They're everywhere everywhere I look I see plastic bags And I'm like it's a rat But it's a plastic bag Okay, not my proudest moment.

[81] And I'll admit, I started out the safari thinking this was a uniquely New York thing.

[82] We're home of the pizza rat, after all.

[83] It's your best life.

[84] For those of you who don't know, this video of a rat pulling a giant slice of pizza twice its size, step by step, down the stairs of a subway station, got 12 million views on YouTube.

[85] It's funny, I was two years ago, I was in Norway.

[86] And there was a person on the rail, and they had a pizza rat button.

[87] And it was Pizza Rat.

[88] And it didn't say New York City, it just said Pizza Rat.

[89] I said, I'm from New York.

[90] He said, oh, Pizza Rat.

[91] He was like, I was famous for Pizza Rat.

[92] So I was like, oh, my God, you know.

[93] But Bobby quickly followed up by pointing out that in his travels all over the country and around the world studying rats, he's found this problem exists in pretty much every major city.

[94] Rats have taken over the world.

[95] They've occupied almost the entire planet.

[96] You know, the only one more successful than in that group is the house mouse.

[97] So we're number one, most successful species.

[98] So we say number two is the house mouse.

[99] And after that, the rats probably come in at third.

[100] So how can you not like an animal that is more?

[101] And adaptable and resilient.

[102] Let that sink in for a second.

[103] Humans, mice, and rats are among the most successful mammalian colonizers of the earth.

[104] And that's not all we share in common.

[105] They tend to be homebodies.

[106] They love baked goods.

[107] The more Bobby described how rats live...

[108] They're loving.

[109] They learn words, their commands, and so forth.

[110] The more I was struck by how weirdly similar they are to me, to us humans.

[111] This animal's able to, as it's moving about, it's visually recognizing things like we do, like, remember to make a left of the light where the Starbucks is.

[112] Well, they have different visual cues, right?

[113] So all along the way, they're...

[114] I have to admit, my respect for rats was starting to grow, And my curiosity about how they ended up in New York City, and it turns out pretty much every other major city was also growing.

[115] So Lawrence and I got together with the rest of the through -line team and began digging into their history.

[116] What we found was a story that spans thousands of years and nearly every continent on earth, taking us from the fields of ancient Mongolia to the palaces of Victorian England to the laboratories of 20th century Maryland.

[117] Our rat safari continues when we come back.

[118] And you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[119] Part 1.

[120] Eating from the same table.

[121] You know, you kind of see the landscape and you're looking for signs of rats everywhere.

[122] Are there burrows there?

[123] Is there a rat feeding in that corner?

[124] So, yeah, they're just to me like part of the city.

[125] This is Dr. Jason Munshi -South.

[126] He's a professor of biology at Fort Emu, University in the Bronx, where he leads his own research lab.

[127] And since about 2008, when I moved to New York City, I've been studying the effects of urbanization on wild animals and also pest species like rats.

[128] Jason's lab focuses on understanding how humans and cities affect wild animal populations in those places.

[129] So I call them up to get a little more insight into what is up with New York City's rats.

[130] And when we were getting on our Zoom call for this interview, something caught my eye.

[131] Well, first of all, I've got to ask, I love your background.

[132] Where?

[133] Did you take that photo?

[134] Yeah, that's actually, it's a Shinto shrine in Kyoto, Japan that's dedicated to rodents.

[135] Oh my gosh.

[136] It's a tiny little place I found by accident.

[137] To his left and right, two statues of rats sit atop small stone pyramids, pedestals, really.

[138] One rat is tall and slender, the other short and stout, and each of the rats is holding onto something.

[139] One is carrying a scroll, and one is carrying a scroll.

[140] a jar of sake.

[141] And so the scroll is to symbolize wisdom and the jar of sake is like abundance.

[142] And so right from the start, it was pretty clear to me that Jason Winchie's south would know a thing or two about his rat neighbors.

[143] They're primarily nocturnal.

[144] They live in burrows, so they'll burrow into soil and spend, you know, most of the day down there and they build these colonies.

[145] Almost like villages of related rats.

[146] They're highly social.

[147] They spend a lot of time with other rats.

[148] They'd have to be somewhere near water sources.

[149] And they are territorial to some degree.

[150] So males will fight with one another.

[151] You'll find especially males with lots of wounds and things as they get older from battles with neighboring rats.

[152] Over time, they'll add more tunnels and they'll start to connect.

[153] They'll sort of overlap with neighboring boroughs.

[154] And so it becomes this big tangle.

[155] Like a subway, but for rats.

[156] So I've seen them in like New York City parks where there wasn't a lot of control going on where you could count like 300 holes and you could just watch them coming in and out all day.

[157] That makes me never want to sit on a patch of grass again in the city.

[158] But for Jason, seeing all those rats coming in and out of those rat holes sparked the question.

[159] What's going on with rats in New York City?

[160] How did these animals get here?

[161] This was long before the pandemic, long before.

[162] run was grappling with that question, and Jason decided to build a whole study around it.

[163] The first thing he discovered was that New York City is actually overrun by just one kind of rat, the brown rat.

[164] Their Latin name is Rattus Norvegicus, which would translate to the Norway rat, but that's a misnomer.

[165] They did not originate in Norway.

[166] We don't exactly know why they have that name.

[167] The most likely story is that the British naturalist John Berkenhow mistakenly wrote that the rat had a ride in England from Norway.

[168] And the mistake stuck.

[169] Jason and his team decided that in order to find the actual origin of the New York City rat, they had to compare its DNA to other rats in the world to find a match, kind of like an ancestry .com or 23M