5 ms·

This article made me laugh, I can't help but wonder if this is some kind of fake news story to promote a class based agenda. I guess it could be true but it se

This article made me laugh, I can't help but wonder if this is some kind of fake news story to promote a class based agenda. I guess it could be true but it seems very odd that these rats traveled all the way from Europe, made their way into the city from the docks, yet somehow decided to stay put for half a millennia once choosing a Manhattan burrough.

gumby 9y ago
The article doesn't say anything like that at all. The rat "neighborhoods" do overlap, but not densely (think of the islands of wooded areas in a ski resort). In such a case it's not unreasonable to see speciation. (which is not described in this article, thus implying continued interbreeding.) You don't need a lot of territory for this to happen. The lice that specialize in humans have split into two distinct species: one for head hair and one for pubic hair. (and allegedly the latter is under threat).
- stan_rogers 9y ago
  Human lice haven't split into two distinct species; the "human" lice - the ones that have been with us for as long as we've been around - are now head lice, and we picked up pubic lice from gorillas after we "lost" most of our body hair. (It's still there, of course, but not in a way that's useful to lice.)
  - jermaustin1 9y ago
    Is there more on this? It sounds both interesting and gross, an intersection of two interested.
    - detaro 9y ago
      https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-gorilla-lice_2.html https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-gori... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_louse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_louse
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    > we picked up pubic lice from gorillas after we "lost" most of our body hair Can we, uhh, not mention this to any alien species we may encounter in the future?
    - bdamm 9y ago
      We should present it early in hopes that they never go out of quarantine.
  - gumby 9y ago
    Thank you, I had it mostly wrong. A quick whip through the Wikipedia claims that the pubic louse is indeed a descendent of a gorilla louse, though now utterly speciated from it and human-exclusive. Human head and body lice have indeed diverged, but are not completely speciated and can, in the lab, still interbreed. The term in the Wikipedia was "subspecies"; as I'm not a zoologist I'm not sure if it's a formal term or not. But my claim head/pubis claim was wrong. That's my TIL for today!
- sandworm101 9y ago
  >>> the latter is under threat. Can we get an endangered-species designation asap? I've shorted Gillet's stock.
tradersam 9y ago
What about that doesn’t make sense to you? Almost all species do that — humans included. Literally: Some families in New York City have been in the same burrough since their ancestor’s arrived from Europe. This can go for anywhere on Earth — a girl I once dated could trace her liniage back hundreds of years, mostly in a small town in Australia for centuries after her ancestor was taken there during British colonization.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  >> mostly in a small town in Australia for centuries after her ancestor was taken there during British colonization. Not that many centuries. Australia was colonized very recently. Go to placed like the middle east or china and families may have been in the same area for thousands of years.
  - asveikau 9y ago
    I think you probably find some degree of that in Europe too until quite recently, notwithstanding some famous major wars and territorial shifts... It's an anecdote, but I was pretty impressed when my uncle recently signed up for one of those ancestry tests, and it correctly pinpointed exactly the region that his grandfather (my great-grandfather) had come from in the late 19th century. I'm certainly no expert in the genetics but it boggles my mind a bit that it's detectable that his recent lineage didn't stray much from that small area of Europe until it went to the States. I share 50% of my ancestry with him, the other 50% is from other parts of Europe, my wife is from another part with its complicated story, and we have kids... After 3 generations I don't think any one particular country should be particularly recognizable (though I'll admit, I may be over-simplifying or misunderstanding how it works). Yet my uncle's DNA test pinpointed a small place in Europe with only a few hundred thousand people, and did so correctly.
    - sandworm101 9y ago
      Be very careful of those tests. Look at who is running them, often a particular church. Many have questioned their methodology. Not of the testing per se, but in how they selected their sample "representative" populations. They didn't do the science to determine whether a sample person was really representative, beyond some questionnaires. And their sampling was based on a particular world view, one that locked populations down circa 150 years ago into modern national boundaries and ignoring previous migrations.
tomcam 9y ago
Obviously you haven’t been to Sheepshead Bay. Ba dum dum
0xfeba 9y ago
The rats didn't buy passage to America... They were just carried there. They are rather smart, but either way will do what they can to find food and mates, just like every other species.
talyian 9y ago
There's this great book on a similar topic, "The Origin of Species," if you're interested in the phenomenon.
hnarn 9y ago
You are what's wrong with the US.
astrodust 9y ago
You're confusing "stay put" with "found a niche and a perpetual and abundant source of food". Many urban species have adapted to city living: Raccoons, skunks, pigeons and sparrows have all found their home and thrive on urban conditions where food is everywhere. A rat living in the city has it pretty good compared to those that have to forage in the wild. Slices of pizza regularly fall onto the subway tracks, for example, but this really doesn't happen in the middle of the forest. Nobody leaves huge dumpsters full of food scattered across the countryside, but they're literally on every single street corner in a city like New York.
drharby 9y ago
Manhattan IS a burrough bub
sigmaprimus 9y ago
Hmm from the response to my comment I did not articulate my point very well, I will try again, yes everything this article says is true but what is the point? Is it that DNA testing has become so accurate that it can now identify family blood lines? OK so yeah I'm genitically distinct from my neighbors, cousins, siblings....but who cares? Just because you can tell that a rat has a different set of genes than its brothers doesn't make a news story, unless you have a different adjenda in dividing a comunity, check out citylab dot Com with "politics" and then maybe you will get my original point.

gumby 9y ago

The article doesn't say anything like that at all. The rat "neighborhoods" do overlap, but not densely (think of the islands of wooded areas in a ski resort). In such a case it's not unreasonable to see speciation. (which is not described in this article, thus implying continued interbreeding.) You don't need a lot of territory for this to happen. The lice that specialize in humans have split into two distinct species: one for head hair and one for pubic hair. (and allegedly the latter is under threat).

stan_rogers 9y ago
Human lice haven't split into two distinct species; the "human" lice - the ones that have been with us for as long as we've been around - are now head lice, and we picked up pubic lice from gorillas after we "lost" most of our body hair. (It's still there, of course, but not in a way that's useful to lice.)
- jermaustin1 9y ago
  Is there more on this? It sounds both interesting and gross, an intersection of two interested.
  - detaro 9y ago
    https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-gorilla-lice_2.html https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-gori... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_louse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_louse
- saalweachter 9y ago
  > we picked up pubic lice from gorillas after we "lost" most of our body hair Can we, uhh, not mention this to any alien species we may encounter in the future?
  - bdamm 9y ago
    We should present it early in hopes that they never go out of quarantine.
- gumby 9y ago
  Thank you, I had it mostly wrong. A quick whip through the Wikipedia claims that the pubic louse is indeed a descendent of a gorilla louse, though now utterly speciated from it and human-exclusive. Human head and body lice have indeed diverged, but are not completely speciated and can, in the lab, still interbreed. The term in the Wikipedia was "subspecies"; as I'm not a zoologist I'm not sure if it's a formal term or not. But my claim head/pubis claim was wrong. That's my TIL for today!
sandworm101 9y ago
>>> the latter is under threat. Can we get an endangered-species designation asap? I've shorted Gillet's stock.

tradersam 9y ago

What about that doesn’t make sense to you? Almost all species do that — humans included. Literally: Some families in New York City have been in the same burrough since their ancestor’s arrived from Europe. This can go for anywhere on Earth — a girl I once dated could trace her liniage back hundreds of years, mostly in a small town in Australia for centuries after her ancestor was taken there during British colonization.

sandworm101 9y ago
>> mostly in a small town in Australia for centuries after her ancestor was taken there during British colonization. Not that many centuries. Australia was colonized very recently. Go to placed like the middle east or china and families may have been in the same area for thousands of years.
- asveikau 9y ago
  I think you probably find some degree of that in Europe too until quite recently, notwithstanding some famous major wars and territorial shifts... It's an anecdote, but I was pretty impressed when my uncle recently signed up for one of those ancestry tests, and it correctly pinpointed exactly the region that his grandfather (my great-grandfather) had come from in the late 19th century. I'm certainly no expert in the genetics but it boggles my mind a bit that it's detectable that his recent lineage didn't stray much from that small area of Europe until it went to the States. I share 50% of my ancestry with him, the other 50% is from other parts of Europe, my wife is from another part with its complicated story, and we have kids... After 3 generations I don't think any one particular country should be particularly recognizable (though I'll admit, I may be over-simplifying or misunderstanding how it works). Yet my uncle's DNA test pinpointed a small place in Europe with only a few hundred thousand people, and did so correctly.
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    Be very careful of those tests. Look at who is running them, often a particular church. Many have questioned their methodology. Not of the testing per se, but in how they selected their sample "representative" populations. They didn't do the science to determine whether a sample person was really representative, beyond some questionnaires. And their sampling was based on a particular world view, one that locked populations down circa 150 years ago into modern national boundaries and ignoring previous migrations.

tomcam 9y ago

Obviously you haven’t been to Sheepshead Bay. Ba dum dum

0xfeba 9y ago

The rats didn't buy passage to America... They were just carried there. They are rather smart, but either way will do what they can to find food and mates, just like every other species.

talyian 9y ago

There's this great book on a similar topic, "The Origin of Species," if you're interested in the phenomenon.

hnarn 9y ago

You are what's wrong with the US.

astrodust 9y ago

You're confusing "stay put" with "found a niche and a perpetual and abundant source of food". Many urban species have adapted to city living: Raccoons, skunks, pigeons and sparrows have all found their home and thrive on urban conditions where food is everywhere. A rat living in the city has it pretty good compared to those that have to forage in the wild. Slices of pizza regularly fall onto the subway tracks, for example, but this really doesn't happen in the middle of the forest. Nobody leaves huge dumpsters full of food scattered across the countryside, but they're literally on every single street corner in a city like New York.

drharby 9y ago

Manhattan IS a burrough bub

sigmaprimus 9y ago

Hmm from the response to my comment I did not articulate my point very well, I will try again, yes everything this article says is true but what is the point? Is it that DNA testing has become so accurate that it can now identify family blood lines? OK so yeah I'm genitically distinct from my neighbors, cousins, siblings....but who cares? Just because you can tell that a rat has a different set of genes than its brothers doesn't make a news story, unless you have a different adjenda in dividing a comunity, check out citylab dot Com with "politics" and then maybe you will get my original point.