4 ms·

The Case for Leaving City Rats Alone (2016)

37 points by dnetesn 8y ago

teslabox 8y ago
In rural Arizona we deal with pack rats [0]. These are sometimes-destructive nuisances. For example, my father replaced his car's spark plug wires. The new wires rapidly disappeared - apparently rodents need to chew hard things to keep their teeth from getting too long. Father bought a second set of wires from the same company, which again rapidly disappeared. Apparently some kinds of spark plug wires are coated with rodent bait (peanut oil?). The third set of wires was from a different company. These did not have rat bait like the other company's wires. My neighbor leaves their vehicle hoods open while on their rafting trips... he also uses live traps to catch and relocate the rats around his house. Otherwise pack rats will set up a nest in vehicles' engine area, destroying the wires and filling it with twigs and food. An Arizona company [1] came up with a sort of poison that only targets rodents' reproductive organs: "ContraPest contains the ovotoxic chemical 4-vinylcyclohexene diepoxide (VCD), which is a known killer of oocytes in immature ovarian follicles. The rat version of ContraPest also contains triptolide, which the company reports has adverse reproductive effects on both males and females. The product has been successfully used to sterilize both male and female mice, rats, and dogs." [2] As "Mr. Pack Rat" explains, it's better to understand the pack rat than to indiscriminately poison them, as rodent predators fall victim to secondary poisoning with standard city-rat poisons, which makes pack rat problem worse [3]. [0] https://www.mrpackrat.net/packrats.html#six https://www.mrpackrat.net/packrats.html#six [1] https://senestech.com https://senestech.com [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest [3] https://www.mrpackrat.net/poison.html#fou https://www.mrpackrat.net/poison.html#fou
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kkylin 8y ago
  Oh gosh, packrats are such a PIA. They seem to love garages when they can get in -- I guess no snakes, no birds of prey, no bobcats, etc. And this thing about chewing wires in cars.
scurvy 8y ago
This article is misguided. A rat outside quickly becomes a rat inside your home after someone leaves the door open too long on a nice day. They also gloss over the disease vector aspect of picking up bacteria from pets. People aren't giving up pets, but we will decide to get rid of rats. I applaud the study for learning more about the rats and their qualities. Now, go eradicate them.
- maxmcd 8y ago
  Certainly it seems like total eradication is the best option. The article just posits that one-off killings have a negative effect. Knowing that the partial killing of a rat "family" potentially increases the diversity and potency of bacteria seems like very useful information in a world where we can't easily kill all rats.
  - jdavis703 8y ago
    Near the end of the article it mentions that existing rat populations act as a buffer against invasive species carrying new infections. This is pretty important for port cities, probably less so for inland areas.
    - DKnoll 8y ago
      I'm surprised they didn't mention it in the article, but Alberta (a province adjacent to British Columbia on the east side) is mostly rat-free (infestations per year at 0 or in the low single digits since 2000. It is entirely land-locked though. As far as I know there have been no adverse effects. They started aggressive rat control in the '50s.
- shhehebehdh 8y ago
  I don’t know if most rats enter the home through the front door. I would guess that is pretty rare. Unsealed crawl spaces and attics are much more likely to be the culprit. Even then, they don’t necessarily do any harm. As long as the interior of the home is sealed, they can’t get in. Our building definitely has rats, and we saw one in our home shortly after we rented it. The previous tenants had just trapped rats they saw, but we insisted that the landlord send someone to seal every ingress point (with copper wool and silicone gel). Since then we haven’t had an issue, even though our little visitor would come daily before. As a bonus, the same way rats get in, so do cockroaches. In NYC, older buildings, especially near the ground floor, are notorious for cockroach infestations. But we don’t have any of those in our unit either, despite the building being a century old. Turns out cockroaches and rats aren’t made of magic. They can’t teleport through solid material. If the interior of your home is sealed, they cannot get in.

37 points by dnetesn 8y ago

In rural Arizona we deal with pack rats [0]. These are sometimes-destructive nuisances. For example, my father replaced his car's spark plug wires. The new wires rapidly disappeared - apparently rodents need to chew hard things to keep their teeth from getting too long. Father bought a second set of wires from the same company, which again rapidly disappeared. Apparently some kinds of spark plug wires are coated with rodent bait (peanut oil?). The third set of wires was from a different company. These did not have rat bait like the other company's wires. My neighbor leaves their vehicle hoods open while on their rafting trips... he also uses live traps to catch and relocate the rats around his house. Otherwise pack rats will set up a nest in vehicles' engine area, destroying the wires and filling it with twigs and food. An Arizona company [1] came up with a sort of poison that only targets rodents' reproductive organs: "ContraPest contains the ovotoxic chemical 4-vinylcyclohexene diepoxide (VCD), which is a known killer of oocytes in immature ovarian follicles. The rat version of ContraPest also contains triptolide, which the company reports has adverse reproductive effects on both males and females. The product has been successfully used to sterilize both male and female mice, rats, and dogs." [2] As "Mr. Pack Rat" explains, it's better to understand the pack rat than to indiscriminately poison them, as rodent predators fall victim to secondary poisoning with standard city-rat poisons, which makes pack rat problem worse [3]. [0] https://www.mrpackrat.net/packrats.html#six https://www.mrpackrat.net/packrats.html#six [1] https://senestech.com https://senestech.com [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest [3] https://www.mrpackrat.net/poison.html#fou https://www.mrpackrat.net/poison.html#fou

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kkylin 8y ago
Oh gosh, packrats are such a PIA. They seem to love garages when they can get in -- I guess no snakes, no birds of prey, no bobcats, etc. And this thing about chewing wires in cars.

scurvy 8y ago

This article is misguided. A rat outside quickly becomes a rat inside your home after someone leaves the door open too long on a nice day. They also gloss over the disease vector aspect of picking up bacteria from pets. People aren't giving up pets, but we will decide to get rid of rats. I applaud the study for learning more about the rats and their qualities. Now, go eradicate them.

maxmcd 8y ago
Certainly it seems like total eradication is the best option. The article just posits that one-off killings have a negative effect. Knowing that the partial killing of a rat "family" potentially increases the diversity and potency of bacteria seems like very useful information in a world where we can't easily kill all rats.
- jdavis703 8y ago
  Near the end of the article it mentions that existing rat populations act as a buffer against invasive species carrying new infections. This is pretty important for port cities, probably less so for inland areas.
  - DKnoll 8y ago
    I'm surprised they didn't mention it in the article, but Alberta (a province adjacent to British Columbia on the east side) is mostly rat-free (infestations per year at 0 or in the low single digits since 2000. It is entirely land-locked though. As far as I know there have been no adverse effects. They started aggressive rat control in the '50s.
shhehebehdh 8y ago
I don’t know if most rats enter the home through the front door. I would guess that is pretty rare. Unsealed crawl spaces and attics are much more likely to be the culprit. Even then, they don’t necessarily do any harm. As long as the interior of the home is sealed, they can’t get in. Our building definitely has rats, and we saw one in our home shortly after we rented it. The previous tenants had just trapped rats they saw, but we insisted that the landlord send someone to seal every ingress point (with copper wool and silicone gel). Since then we haven’t had an issue, even though our little visitor would come daily before. As a bonus, the same way rats get in, so do cockroaches. In NYC, older buildings, especially near the ground floor, are notorious for cockroach infestations. But we don’t have any of those in our unit either, despite the building being a century old. Turns out cockroaches and rats aren’t made of magic. They can’t teleport through solid material. If the interior of your home is sealed, they cannot get in.