Of Rats and Men

[0] Before we get to our episode this week, I know a lot of you are probably following what's happening in Ukraine right now.

[1] And we just wanted to let you know that we're hard at work on an episode to help you make sense of everything.

[2] Look out for it in your feeds next week.

[3] For now, we present you with rats.

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

[5] Yes.

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

[7] It's a nice day today.

[8] Very sunny.

[9] Surprisingly, no rats yet today.

[10] No rats yet.

[11] In sight.

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

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

[14] Bobby Corrigan?

[15] Yeah.

[16] Rodentologist.

[17] Yeah, yeah.

[18] All things, rodents.

[19] A few weeks back, I convinced producer Lawrence Wu, who's been with us since the very beginning of ThruLine, to go with me on a rat safari through New York City.

[20] He used to live here, too, before the rats chased them out to New Jersey.

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

[22] Any rats?

[23] No?

[24] Well, just wait, just wait.

[25] I've been thinking about rats a lot during the pandemic, like an unhealthy amount.

[26] Yeah, Run talks about rats all the time.

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

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

[29] I live in New York City, in Manhattan, right next to this small, empty plot of land where a brownstone once stood.

[30] That's now basically a rat condominium.

[31] They hang out on the sidewalk.

[32] They jump out from behind my trash can.

[33] They run up and down the curb.

[34] They're often the first thing I see.

[35] when I leave my apartment, and the last thing I see before I walk into it.

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

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

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

[39] 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.

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

[41] Boston City Councilors said they're getting.

[42] increased rat reports from nearly every neighborhood.

[43] It's absolutely disgusting.

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

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

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

[47] And as we humans have retreated into our homes over the last two years, the natural world has reclaimed some space.

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

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

[50] Trust me, even if you don't think you care about rats...

[51] We are going down the subway station.

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

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

[54] This is Chambers.

[55] Our rat's fur is available to one frame.

[56] We're here.

[57] Let's go.

[58] 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.

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

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

[61] Hey, Bobby.

[62] How we doing?

[63] Bobby grew up loving nature.

[64] He'd spent hours watching and studying the bugs in his backyard.

[65] 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.

[66] The rats in his barn.

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

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

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

[70] And this is an awesome man. Rats became a lifelong passion and profession for Bobby.

[71] These days, he's a scientist who helps companies and local governments rein in their rat problems, retracing rat footsteps, figuring out the hot spots, coming up with solutions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[78] And you'll say to their spouse, hey, you know what, we need to refill our wine.

[79] And it was great talking with you.

[80] I'm sure some of you are thinking, yeah, I definitely try to get out of that conversation.

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

[82] They're gross.

[83] They're creepy.

[84] They sneak around at night with those long tails and daggers for teeth.

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

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

[87] It's very significant.

[88] Some people just can't sleep at night.

[89] You know, they stress if they see a rat, they can't concentrate during work, it's a big deal.

[90] It's a big deal.

[91] Yeah.

[92] You might be in there.

[93] I think I went through that.

[94] 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.

[95] They're everywhere.

[96] Everywhere I look.

[97] I see plastic bags and I'm like, it's a rat, but it's something happening by.

[98] Okay, not my proudest moment.

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

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

[101] It is your best life.

[102] 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.

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

[104] And there was a person on the, on the, on They were railed and they had a pizza rat, button.

[105] And it was pizza rat.

[106] And it didn't say New York City, it just said pizza rat.

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

[108] He said, oh, pizza rag.

[109] It was like, I was famous for pizza rat.

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

[111] 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.

[112] Rats have taken over the world.

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

[114] You know, the only one.

[115] more successful than in that group is the house mouse.

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

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

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

[119] So how can you not like an animal that's more?

[120] And adaptable and resilient.

[121] Let that sink in for a second.

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

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

[124] They tend to be homebodies.

[125] They love baked goods.

[126] Bake goods.

[127] The more Bobby described how rats live.

[128] They're loving.

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

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

[131] This animal is able to, as it's moving about, it's visually recognizing things like we do.

[132] Like, remember to make a left of the light where the Starbucks is.

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

[134] So all along the way...

[135] I have to admit, my respect for rats, these adaptable creatures that have managed to fill the vacuum we've left during the pandemic was starting to grow.

[136] 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.

[137] So Lawrence and I got together with the rest of the ThruLine team and began digging into their history.

[138] 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.

[139] in England to the laboratories of 20th century Maryland.

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

[141] Hello, my name is Victor Stern, and like you, I'm listening to Theronian Line.

[142] Part 1, eating from the same table.

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

[144] Are there burrows there?

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

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

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

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

[149] 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.

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

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

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

[153] Well, first of all, I got to ask, I love your background.

[154] Where, did you take that photo?

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

[156] Oh, my gosh.

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

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

[159] One rat is tall and slender, the other short and stout.

[160] and each of the rats is holding onto something.

[161] One is carrying a scroll, and one is carrying a jar of sake.

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

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

[164] They're primarily nocturnal.

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

[166] And they build these colonies, almost like, villages of related rats.

[167] They're highly social.

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

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

[170] And they are, you know, territorial to some degree.

[171] So males will fight with one another.

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

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

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

[175] And so it becomes this big tangle.

[176] Like a subway, but for rats.

[177] So I've seen them, you know, in like New York City parks where there wasn't a lot of control going on.

[178] Or you could count like 300 holes and you could just watch them coming in and out all day.

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

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

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

[182] How did these animals get here?

[183] This was long before the pandemic, long before Run was grappling with that question.

[184] And Jason decided to build a whole study around it.

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

[186] Their Latin name is Rattis Norvegicus, which would translate to the Norway rat.

[187] But that's a misnomer.

[188] They did not originate in Norway.

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

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

[191] And the mistake stuck.

[192] 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