Speaker 1: Oh hello, this is the start of Spooktober, and we're
Speaker 1: kind of like rolling in with a sweet, sweet, cute
Speaker 1: creature and a place you're probably afraid of. So here's Jill.
Speaker 1: I've been actually in New York all week and I
Speaker 1: was working with the Wildlife Justice Commission, and I was
Speaker 1: also there for the wedding of your favorite diabetologist, doctor
Speaker 1: Mike Natter and his new.
Speaker 2: Bride, Alice.
Speaker 1: And while I was there, I saw a few rats
Speaker 1: and I thought about them fondly, and you will understand
Speaker 1: why when you listen to this episode.
Speaker 2: So I took the week off.
Speaker 1: To enjoy New York and to go record some episodes
Speaker 1: that you're going to hear very soon. So enjoy this
Speaker 1: encore with honestly one of my favorite episodes we've ever done.
Speaker 1: I think about this and I want to cry. You'll
Speaker 1: find out why, Okay, Oh hey, it's that guy who's
Speaker 1: asleep upright on the bus and doesn't know that you're
Speaker 1: staring at him, waiting to see if he'll wake up.
Speaker 1: Alli Ward back with an episode that's just like musical
Speaker 1: to our years. If you are following the recent release
Speaker 1: of the fan created TikTok redditituoy musical. But even if
Speaker 1: literally none of those words in succession made any sense
Speaker 1: to you, that's okay. This ology is one that is
Speaker 1: of dark intrigue and cuddles and appalled curiosity. So better
Speaker 1: to arm yourself with facts in trivia about the.
Speaker 2: Critters that you curse.
Speaker 1: Rats, but not just any rats, city rats, sewer rodents,
Speaker 1: pizza rats, chappote like goblins, the outdoor pets that none
Speaker 1: of us own. Let's learn to love them. Okay, but first,
Speaker 1: some love for you. Thank you to the patrons, Thanks
Speaker 1: to the folks who take a second to subscribe and
Speaker 1: rate it really matters so much, And the ones who
Speaker 1: take a minute or two to leave a review of
Speaker 1: which I read all while I clutch my heart, and
Speaker 1: then I read one aloud, such as this week from
Speaker 1: Kristin G who says hooked.
Speaker 2: Absolutely love this podcast.
Speaker 1: It comes with a dad, and I feel like we
Speaker 1: have a healthy and inquisitive relationship.
Speaker 3: Join the fam.
Speaker 1: You will be suckered into eating Tim TAM's, huffing trees
Speaker 1: and cutting banks.
Speaker 2: Also, Aaron loves turtles.
Speaker 1: You named a cat after me, and no it's not weird,
Speaker 1: it's great. Okay, So Rodentology comes from the Latin word rondere,
Speaker 1: meaning to gnaw at or eat away.
Speaker 2: Which is very sexy.
Speaker 1: And the word rodent covers thousands of species that we
Speaker 1: could not possibly encapsulate in one interview. But for this episode,
Speaker 1: we're talking rats because this urban rodentologist is.
Speaker 2: The expert on sewer rats.
Speaker 1: That's right, there's a guy for that, and he has
Speaker 1: the Twitter handle rodentologist.
Speaker 2: He's got it.
Speaker 1: So he is cited in hundreds of articles about the
Speaker 1: outside animals that maybe you are not looking for as
Speaker 1: a roommate. Now, if there is an avocado being nibbled
Speaker 1: on at midnight or a slice dragged down a stairwell,
Speaker 1: his phone is a jingle for quotes and insight. And
Speaker 1: so when he returned an email saying sound super about
Speaker 1: doing this interview, I honestly think I gasped, And during
Speaker 1: the interview itself, I enjoyed this chat so.
Speaker 2: So so much.
Speaker 1: I remember having a thought I had the best job
Speaker 1: on earth. He's that sweet and honest and endearing and
Speaker 1: curious and wonderfilled of a rodentologist.
Speaker 4: You gonna love him.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited for you.
Speaker 1: Okay, So he got his PhD at Purdue University in rodentology,
Speaker 1: studying rodent control technology for pig barns and chicken facilities,
Speaker 1: and was a longtime research scientist for the New York
Speaker 1: Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. And he's taught rat
Speaker 1: Academy to city planners, and he's known all over the
Speaker 1: world for his knowledge and compassion and detective work and
Speaker 1: helping humans and rats coexist. So he owns RMC Pest
Speaker 1: Management Consulting and is regularly called on by the press.
Speaker 1: So we hopped on a call.
Speaker 2: It was truly one of.
Speaker 1: My greatest professional joys. And I think I love rats now.
Speaker 1: So grab a snack from the garbage and learn all
Speaker 1: about everything from their superpower teeth to their scaly naked tail,
Speaker 1: their cute pink little hands, relationship, their preferred food dialects,
Speaker 1: how they communicate, where they sleep, how big they really
Speaker 1: get the best real estate for rats, how history books
Speaker 1: gave them the shaft, how many rats one couple can have,
Speaker 1: and of course, how to deal humanely if they ever
Speaker 1: become an unwelcome HouseGuest with likely one of the world's
Speaker 1: most beloved rodentologists, doctor Robert Corrigan.
Speaker 4: Yes, my name is Robert Carrigan and you go by
Speaker 4: Bobby too, correct, I go by Bobby or doctor Corgan.
Speaker 4: I usually just go buy Bobby Carrigan.
Speaker 1: And it's key or him too write. Yes, okay, great,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to talk to you. You have no idea.
Speaker 1: I have been screencapping every article that you've been quoted
Speaker 1: in for like the last year or two.
Speaker 3: This is like holy Grail of rodentology.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me a.
Speaker 1: Little bit about what got you interested in rodents, particularly
Speaker 1: urban rodents. Where about are you based and have you
Speaker 1: always been based in an urban environment?
Speaker 4: Well, I'm based just north of New York City, in
Speaker 4: along the Hudson River, and I was born in Brooklyn,
Speaker 4: raised on Long Island, and I took a two year
Speaker 4: course at a state university on Long Island, State University
Speaker 4: of Farmingdale, and I met an entomologist, urban entomologist who
Speaker 4: was teaching a course and it was him, doctor Frishman,
Speaker 4: that inspired me to study the animals that share our
Speaker 4: urban environment. And from there I graduated, took a job
Speaker 4: to save money for the rest of my college, and
Speaker 4: I took a job as a pest control guy in
Speaker 4: New York City, and from there I ended up in
Speaker 4: the sewers. You know, new guy gets the crazy job.
Speaker 4: So they put me into sewers to bait for rats,
Speaker 4: and which sounds pretty gross, but I'm a nature nerd,
Speaker 4: so I just thought this is so cool, even though
Speaker 4: I had to crawl in and out of sewers for
Speaker 4: several months before they promoted me and kind of allowed
Speaker 4: me above ground. But that's where it all started. And
Speaker 4: then when I went back to college at Purdue University
Speaker 4: in graduate school, I went on and said I want
Speaker 4: to study rodents, and they said, okay, so that was
Speaker 4: the path.
Speaker 1: When you say I want to study rodents, do you
Speaker 1: get to select the type of rodents or do you
Speaker 1: have to learn about every single rota under this sign
Speaker 1: and then go take a job working with, say, urban rats.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question, you know. At first, and
Speaker 4: I was very lucky with the scientists that predue. They said,
Speaker 4: as long as it's you know, going to take you
Speaker 4: through this scientific process, and you know, it doesn't almost
Speaker 4: doesn't matter what you want to study. In that program.
Speaker 4: You could have studied earthworms, and which I thought were
Speaker 4: pretty cool just that in itself. But I said, well,
Speaker 4: you know, I remember my days in the sewers of
Speaker 4: New York City, and I didn't know what I was
Speaker 4: looking at, quite honestly, but I thought it was pretty cool.
Speaker 4: It was pretty complex, and that's what I asked to do,
Speaker 4: and they said, go for it. So I asked specifically
Speaker 4: for just urban rodents, which is only three species. It's
Speaker 4: the house mouse, it's noy rats, and it's the roof rat.
Speaker 4: Just those three and that's enough for one hundred career
Speaker 4: right there. Yeah, I am these days.
Speaker 2: What were the sewers like?
Speaker 3: What was your first day like in the sewers?
Speaker 1: What kind of things do you see down there?
Speaker 3: What does it smell like?
Speaker 2: Is it scary?
Speaker 4: Is it fun? Well? You know, I have to tell
Speaker 4: you that when I first climbed down a ladder into
Speaker 4: a sort of New York City, my heart was pounding
Speaker 4: in my chest because, I mean, you don't know what
Speaker 4: you're going into, right, even though someone had to show me,
Speaker 4: you know, take me down and show me what to do,
Speaker 4: what not to do, and these kinds of things. But
Speaker 4: it's it's pretty intimidating, to be honest with you. It's
Speaker 4: and it's not much to it, so it's not exciting.
Speaker 4: It's just a tunnel, and right below your feet is
Speaker 4: a low stream of you know, effluent that goes by.
Speaker 4: And because it's enough air exchange alley, a lot of
Speaker 4: people they go, I must smell horrible and stuff, but
Speaker 4: it actually does not. And I mean you don't want to.
Speaker 4: You don't really want to stand there and stare at
Speaker 4: what goes by. To be honest with you, you can imagine so,
Speaker 4: but at the same time, it's just a tunnel. The
Speaker 4: tunnels I were in were the old tunnels. That's where
Speaker 4: the rats like to go, and they're made out of brick.
Speaker 4: And there's not hordes of rats either. Everyone thinks it's
Speaker 4: these you know, monster populations of rats. It's like five
Speaker 4: rats here and there, scurry about. Then you don't see
Speaker 4: any for fifty sixty feet, then another three, then so
Speaker 4: forth and so on. You know, mammal's a mammal, whether
Speaker 4: it's a whale or a rat and a sewer or
Speaker 4: the whale in the ocean. It's me being a nature nerd.
Speaker 4: I just said, holy cow, there's these animals that live
Speaker 4: in the pitch black down here completely, but yet they
Speaker 4: know they're way around. They communicate. I see them muzzling
Speaker 4: each other and so forth. So it was all to
Speaker 4: me super cool.
Speaker 1: It's it's so interesting to think, too, when you're bustling
Speaker 1: around Manhattan that there's just an entire different world, an
Speaker 1: ecosystem under your feet all the time.
Speaker 4: Exactly. That's exactly it. So it couldn't set it any better.
Speaker 1: And how did these these cosmopolitan New York rats? How
Speaker 1: did they get down there from you know, Norway or
Speaker 1: was it China? Did they come over on boats? How
Speaker 1: did North America get this population?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the history seems to say that they
Speaker 4: originated in Central Asia. You know, there's some debate there
Speaker 4: exactly where, but for the most part, you know, it's
Speaker 4: probably just slightly west of Turkmenistan, and over time, with
Speaker 4: the trade routes, you know, grain spices, silk road, this
Speaker 4: kind of thing, they made their way into Europe, and
Speaker 4: once into Europe, of course, especially with early trade with
Speaker 4: North America and explorers over they came with the ships.
Speaker 4: Probably the first rats was the black rat, arrived in Jamestown,
Speaker 4: Virginia's the best history we have on that, and the
Speaker 4: rats from there, if not from ships directly in Philadelphia
Speaker 4: and New York City, all the ports of the East Coast.
Speaker 4: You know, there were thousands of ships. If you look
Speaker 4: at some of the paintings of the late seventeen hundreds
Speaker 4: and early eighteen hundreds, you know, the harbors were packed
Speaker 4: like traffic jams with ships from all over the world
Speaker 4: trying to you know, colonize and bring trade and so forth.
Speaker 1: Okay, side note, what happened to all those ships? Well,
Speaker 1: over time they crumble, they crash, they sink, But don't worry.
Speaker 1: We have an episode about maritime archaeology.
Speaker 5: I e.
Speaker 2: Shipwrecks.
Speaker 1: But for now, rats just packing their backs full of
Speaker 1: cheese and boarding cruises.
Speaker 4: Rats love ships there by the water. So we were
Speaker 4: probably in pockets and rats every single day from different
Speaker 4: parts of Europe and Asia. And from there they found,
Speaker 4: especially in New York Alley they found you know, it's
Speaker 4: an island. Manhattan's an island. There's streams everywhere, there's lots
Speaker 4: of earth everywhere. People were populating and putting out their refuse,
Speaker 4: and so the rats probably said, Wow, this North America
Speaker 4: deal is fabulous New world from the New World.
Speaker 3: And how do they do so well in the light?
Speaker 1: Because I imagine too, if they're in the cargo hole
Speaker 1: of an old creaky ship hundreds of years ago. It's
Speaker 1: got to be low levels of light, not a lot
Speaker 1: of vegetation too.
Speaker 3: How do they do so well in that environment.
Speaker 4: Well, you know that's a credit to these species. You know,
Speaker 4: they're so innovative, they're so adaptable. They're very creative in
Speaker 4: the way they can find food and what they will eat,
Speaker 4: and if need be, they will eat the same thing
Speaker 4: day after day after day. But in those creaky holes
Speaker 4: of the ship, as you put it, you know, they
Speaker 4: were a lot of times stealing, stealing the food of
Speaker 4: people on board. They would all eat sailors, you know,
Speaker 4: they would get up to get to their own food,
Speaker 4: and they'd see that the rats and the mice had
Speaker 4: gotten into it already. In fact, that's why, you know,
Speaker 4: there's a word a scientist who rodentology used for these animals.
Speaker 4: It's called the klepto parasites, meaning they parasitize us by
Speaker 4: stealing from us more than anything. So that's how they
Speaker 4: got over the ocean is by stealing from from these sailors.
Speaker 1: And now they're stealing avocados, they're stealing slices of pizza.
Speaker 2: They seem to have good taste.
Speaker 4: They sure do. They have the same taste as we do.
Speaker 4: They love pizza, as everyone knows. But it's got to
Speaker 4: be New York pizza. It's something in the water, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Pizza rat side note made its glorious debut in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen when a man named Matt Little bore witness to
Speaker 1: one blessed rodent dragging a New York slice. Now eleven
Speaker 1: point six million people have watched this fourteen second clip,
Speaker 1: and also side note, nobody knows if it's really the
Speaker 1: water that makes New York pizza so legendary. Some theorize
Speaker 1: it's the decades old krusty ovens, or it's the rush
Speaker 1: of churning out so many slices in a day that
Speaker 1: leads to hastily made but better pies. Others say it's
Speaker 1: just straight up scale. Either way, rats, No, it's good.
Speaker 1: And now people have been asking you a lot. With
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, with coronavirus and the pandemic, the streets look
Speaker 1: a lot different than they did a year ago, And
Speaker 1: so how are urban rodents adapting to our social structure
Speaker 1: changing so much?
Speaker 4: It's the biggest question on the docket right now as
Speaker 4: to what's going on. And of course nobody was ready
Speaker 4: for this, right, so nobody had an experiment set up
Speaker 4: in design to start taking data. But all the road
Speaker 4: intoligence around the country, we have been paying close attention
Speaker 4: here in New York and it's similar to other cities.
Speaker 4: They've been that opportunist. Every night the garbage gets put
Speaker 4: out on the street for collection. And in New York
Speaker 4: alone we have thousands, something like twenty two thousand restaurants,
Speaker 4: so the rats have had it easy for decades. And
Speaker 4: every night all they had to do is leave their
Speaker 4: comfortable little nest and come out to the curb and
Speaker 4: waste human waste, human foods, just in bags and cans.
Speaker 4: And so all of a sudden, as you know, that
Speaker 4: disappeared that overnight, that was gone when the city shut down,
Speaker 4: where did everybody go? So what we saw initially, what
Speaker 4: I saw initially is you know, they came out the
Speaker 4: very first night, March eighteenth was when we shut down,
Speaker 4: and there was no food on the curve.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you're trying to envision this, just picture like
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty whiskery rodents darting up and down a
Speaker 1: trash can or maybe coily peeking out from behind a
Speaker 1: car tire. And size wise, they're around sixteen to twenty
Speaker 1: inches long total. But imagine the rat's body from about
Speaker 1: the tip of your middle finger to your wrist. The
Speaker 1: tail is kind of like from your wrist almost to
Speaker 1: your elbow or somebody else's elbow. Picture this is somebody
Speaker 1: else's arm, or don't picture a person at all. I
Speaker 1: should just erase this aside.
Speaker 4: We study rats because they're like us. So picture yourself
Speaker 4: if all of a sudden, no dinner, no breakfast, next day,
Speaker 4: no dinner again, no breakfast for three days in a row.
Speaker 4: You're going to be stressed. Obviously, you're a mammal. You
Speaker 4: need food. And so these rats they're stressed. And when
Speaker 4: they came out in March, the end of March, it
Speaker 4: was for them very serious. There was night after night
Speaker 4: there was no food. So two things happened ALLEI. One
Speaker 4: is they started fighting among themselves, which is what we
Speaker 4: would do. To start fighting bickering. The strongest rats started
Speaker 4: killing the weaker rats to consume them. That's the way
Speaker 4: nature works with almost all animals. And second to that
Speaker 4: is some of the rats, especially the weaker ones, said well,
Speaker 4: maybe there's food elsewhere further down the road. Maybe there's
Speaker 4: food at a long distance. And you know, they're capable
Speaker 4: mammals of traveling pretty good distances in a short period
Speaker 4: of time. So those two things, they started fighting, killing, cannibalizing,
Speaker 4: and then dispersing looking for well, where is the food.
Speaker 4: And then they also started saying, well, maybe it's during
Speaker 4: the day. So people started calling and saying, we're seeing
Speaker 4: rats the middle of the day. They're very brazing. They
Speaker 4: look you look brave, and like they're going to attack
Speaker 4: my ankles or something. I tell everyone, look, these are disoriented, stressed, out,
Speaker 4: hungry mammals. Whether it's cats or rats, or whales or humans,
Speaker 4: we're all going to have this similar behavior when you
Speaker 4: are threatened with death because of hunger.
Speaker 1: And yes, there are plenty of documented cases of this
Speaker 1: behavior in the human species, which is way more disgusting
Speaker 1: than learning about cute, pink footed, smart, scrappy little rascals
Speaker 1: whose evolutionary strategy is simply you're.
Speaker 2: Going to eat that. Are you thinking.
Speaker 1: That once the pandemic is over, knock on.
Speaker 5: Wood, I'll just keep knocking.
Speaker 1: That things will return to normal fairly quickly because they're
Speaker 1: so adaptable, or do you think this has forever changed
Speaker 1: the way that rats are living in urban environments.
Speaker 4: I think they're going to return to normal fairly quickly.
Speaker 4: And you know, part of the reason again so successful
Speaker 4: and have colonized almost the entire planet Earth is you know,
Speaker 4: they have an incredible ability to reproduce, as everyone knows.
Speaker 4: And in fact, if you want to impact a rat
Speaker 4: population alley, you have to remove about ninety six percent
Speaker 4: of their older individuals. Ninety six percent. Oh my god,
Speaker 4: that's exactly right. So if you have let's just say,
Speaker 4: for the sake of argument, a thousand rats occupying you know,
Speaker 4: some city street, Los Angeles or New York or wherever,
Speaker 4: to get rid of ninety six percent of one thousand rats,
Speaker 4: that takes a lot, that takes tramac. That's almost like
Speaker 4: a complete disease wipeout or this kind of thing. So
Speaker 4: there's going to be plenty of rats that survive this pandemic,
Speaker 4: even though we don't have any measurements. Sixty seventy, we
Speaker 4: don't know thirty eight. I don't know how many percent
Speaker 4: are going to be eliminated, but it's not going to
Speaker 4: be ninety six percent. If it's summertime, when you knock
Speaker 4: them down to let's say ninety four percent, in six months,
Speaker 4: they're back to the original population six months. Oh, I know,
Speaker 4: it's an amazing, amazing mammal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they can make so many babies. And you mentioned
Speaker 1: something about how they came out of their nests looking
Speaker 1: for food, and I guess I had never thought about it.
Speaker 1: But where are they kicking it when they're not guming
Speaker 1: up on a slice on the sidewalk, Like.
Speaker 3: Are they nocturnal?
Speaker 1: Are they sleeping in comfy little cozy beds that they've
Speaker 1: made out of leaves, or where are they hanging out?
Speaker 3: Where do they sleep?
Speaker 4: Well, they're very adaptable. So a city rat, if they
Speaker 4: could talk to us, they'd say, look, we're from Mongolia area,
Speaker 4: we're from Asia. We are burrowing mammals. We construct our
Speaker 4: nest in the ground. Their brain is what's called the
Speaker 4: geophilic orientation. That means they go into the earth. They're
Speaker 4: attracted by going down into the earth geophilic And so
Speaker 4: even in the city, their brain says, if I can
Speaker 4: I like to dig into the earth of this city.
Speaker 4: So the number one natural place to go is if
Speaker 4: there's any kind of what we call available earth in
Speaker 4: space in a city, like a tree pit or a
Speaker 4: park or somebody's guarden that's undisturbed, they will construct a burrow.
Speaker 4: They dig down about anywhere from twelve to eighteen inches
Speaker 4: on a gradual slope, and about three feet into that tunnel,
Speaker 4: they create a nest, a bedroom, and they line that
Speaker 4: with eaves and straw. And in cities they love plastic.
Speaker 4: I find plastic is their beds many times. And then
Speaker 4: they construct a back door to that bedroom another three yeah,
Speaker 4: another three feet out in two different directions. They have
Speaker 4: back doors in case somebody comes in the front door
Speaker 4: like a snake or rain, you know, flood, they have
Speaker 4: a way out. And they disguise those two back doors.
Speaker 4: By the way. So when now I'm forging about to
Speaker 4: your question, they're they're down in those very well constructed
Speaker 4: nests with escape holes built into them.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 1: And they don't even have to worry about rent control,
Speaker 1: having to watch the obituary to see when something opens
Speaker 1: up build.
Speaker 4: Their own exactly. Gosh.
Speaker 1: Okay, so obviously rats are smart. They're smarter than we
Speaker 1: give them credit for.
Speaker 4: I imagine, right, Well, the research keeps coming in and
Speaker 4: you know, we've learned just in the past three or
Speaker 4: four years, if you follow the journal publications from good
Speaker 4: referee journals, we are learning so much that these animals,
Speaker 4: we've underestimated them forever in their intelligence. We always said
Speaker 4: all rats are smart, but if you do a dive
Speaker 4: on this, you'll find that now we know they can
Speaker 4: use tools. We thought that was we thought that was
Speaker 4: reserved for the higher quote mammals like genzes road and
Speaker 4: choose tools.
Speaker 2: What kind of tools like a spork or a gun
Speaker 2: or what do they have?
Speaker 4: Well, if they have a hard time, say getting a
Speaker 4: piece of food they want out between two rocks, for example,
Speaker 4: they'll go find a stick, you know, pick it up
Speaker 4: with their teeth and bring it over and use that
Speaker 4: to help them dig out that piece of food, you know.
Speaker 4: And exterminies are sending me cam footage which has been amazing.
Speaker 4: They're putting up these cams and buildings to see where
Speaker 4: the rats are hiding, can get rid of them. And
Speaker 4: they're sending me footage the past couple of years where
Speaker 4: rats have been seen picking up these sticks and dropping
Speaker 4: them on traps to set them off and then they
Speaker 4: steal debate afterwards.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, genius Okay, so, way back in two thousand
Speaker 5: and four, when sequencing genomes was not something you could
Speaker 5: do via a Q tip and a website, the rat
Speaker 5: genome was among the first under the proverbial microscope, and
Speaker 5: one researcher, Baylor College's Richard Gibbs estimated that rodent evolution
Speaker 5: was an order of magnitude faster than human although given
Speaker 5: that they only just date for twenty one or so
Speaker 5: days and produce new generations ninety two times faster.
Speaker 1: Than you or me, maybe rats are going to be
Speaker 1: driving this ship soon, who knows. Also, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to do the calculations on how big of a mini
Speaker 1: van a rat family would need, just know that in
Speaker 1: the span of one year, one happy rat couple can
Speaker 1: grow their family from just the two of them to
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand, which means that every rat you see scuttling
Speaker 1: under a discarded cowhich is probably somebody's great great great
Speaker 1: great great grandma, which is very sweet. Now, the whole time,
Speaker 1: you've thought rats were like nineteen ninety six Pontiac sunfire
Speaker 1: that smelled like bon farts, But really rats are souped
Speaker 1: up flying deloreans that run on banana peels, and I
Speaker 1: bet they brag about it to each other. And so
Speaker 1: I have heard that they can communicate among themselves. I've
Speaker 1: seen videos where they laugh when they're tickled. Do they
Speaker 1: have languages among themselves? How do they tell each other like, Hey,
Speaker 1: don't go down here, there's a big cat over there.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's fascinating, that whole business of audible biology. And
Speaker 4: you know, so they have these vocal sounds that they
Speaker 4: will use to communicate to each other. They'll clide it
Speaker 4: a teeth together for example. For gra they will utter,
Speaker 4: you know, make these squeaks and sounds, they will hiss.
Speaker 4: So they have these vocalizations that actually can be picked
Speaker 4: up and heard. They also have ultrasonic sounds that they
Speaker 4: make that they communicate with. In fact, is research. It
Speaker 4: shows mating trying to attract a mate. For example, they
Speaker 4: will use ultrasonic songs and squeaks, you know, to try
Speaker 4: to attract the opposite sex for you know, mating.
Speaker 1: Rodent's getting hot and freaky, let's talk about it. So
Speaker 1: when a lady rat is dt MFDB down to make
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand babies, she'll hop and dart about and her
Speaker 1: version of swiping right is what is called a lordosis response,
Speaker 1: which is similar to a good old fashioned work just
Speaker 1: back arches, butt up, providing access to the business, and
Speaker 1: rather than make an face, the rats in the throes
Speaker 1: of their passion will make ultrasonic squeaks at around fifty
Speaker 1: kilohertz and then the male will below a little lower
Speaker 1: to tell other lads, please stay away this one. This
Speaker 1: one loves me for a few minutes now. In early
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, a team of researchers at Washington University's Newmeyer
Speaker 1: Lab published a paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology about decoding
Speaker 1: ultrasonic rat chatter using neural networks. And it's called deep squeak,
Speaker 1: and soon we'll be able to learn all about the
Speaker 1: rat gossip. So there are more than meets the eye
Speaker 1: and the ear and also the nose.
Speaker 4: And after that then they have another system that is
Speaker 4: extremely cool, and that's pheromones. So you know rats and
Speaker 4: mice they urinate, of course a lot. And part of
Speaker 4: the reason that urinate a lot is because within that
Speaker 4: urine there's pheromones and they'll defecate a lot. So research
Speaker 4: is shown, like the rats in the city as an example,
Speaker 4: sometimes you know, and you probably have seen it. I'm
Speaker 4: sure you'll see some rat dropping someplace and sometimes you'll
Speaker 4: find six or seven of those droppings in the same spot. Well,
Speaker 4: that was deliberately done as a communication message for the
Speaker 4: colony that exists in that area that something of a
Speaker 4: resource was located there, either food or shelter or water
Speaker 4: or something. Because rats. Again, good journal research have shown
Speaker 4: in those droppings of rats these pheromones that communicate to
Speaker 4: the colony members. So they speak to each other not
Speaker 4: with words, but with chemicals.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we thought Twitter was advanced.
Speaker 2: That's I love that.
Speaker 1: Their social media is just a small pile of poops.
Speaker 3: It's like see what he pooped? Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Yes, And you know it's funny. Ali. If you look
Speaker 4: at pictures taken and you know National Geographic did this beautifully,
Speaker 4: you know where they capture a family of rodents together
Speaker 4: doing something and you will see inevitably one or two
Speaker 4: of those rats smelling the droppings of their brothers or
Speaker 4: sisters or parents. Well, they're communicated. They say, hey, what
Speaker 4: are they trying to tell me?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, you know what.
Speaker 1: Later today, FaceTime your mom or leave a nice comment
Speaker 1: on your cousin's instagram. Just be thankful that we have
Speaker 1: a different way of touching pace. And one of the
Speaker 1: most common that I just have to ask on behalf
Speaker 1: of all of us. When we hear the words urban rodentologist,
Speaker 1: we think rat king is a.
Speaker 2: Rat king a real.
Speaker 3: Phenomenon. Have you heard of this?
Speaker 4: Of course? Yes, okay, And I can appreciate that many
Speaker 4: people will ask you that question that ologies, I've never
Speaker 4: seen one. Okay, I've seen a artistic I think it's
Speaker 4: a famous piece of art or ceramic. Somebody somewhere back,
Speaker 4: I believe the eighteen hundreds showed a group of rats
Speaker 4: all tangled up together with their tails, and they call
Speaker 4: that a rat king.
Speaker 1: Side note, the French call this gruesome tangly occurrence a
Speaker 1: rue de rats or a spinning wheel of rats, as
Speaker 1: the knot would be the center and then the tails
Speaker 1: look like spokes, so wheel big trouble for rodents.
Speaker 2: And also it kind of.
Speaker 1: Looks like a plate of thick spaghetti that's rimmed in rats.
Speaker 1: It's horrifying. But a few preserved examples dating back hundreds
Speaker 1: of years are in museums.
Speaker 2: But are they a hoax? Bobby smells a rat, but.
Speaker 4: I've never seen in the wild. There's no authentic scientific
Speaker 4: citation of such, but I haven't said that here. I
Speaker 4: would say it is possible that whoever started that business
Speaker 4: did witness it, because you know, I have uncovered rat
Speaker 4: nests where all the rats are about the same age,
Speaker 4: kind of like teenage rats, and they're all huddled together
Speaker 4: in a nest and they had a sudden calamity of
Speaker 4: some sort that killed them all. You know, either they
Speaker 4: all sadly got a rock or something I've moved on
Speaker 4: top of them, and they were all huddled together, and
Speaker 4: their tails were at least intertwined. Doesn't mean they were
Speaker 4: tangled up, but they were intertwined. So I can see
Speaker 4: where someone may have discovered or maybe a group of
Speaker 4: rodents that froze to death below ground or something like this,
Speaker 4: and all their tails were intertwined and assumed they wouldn't
Speaker 4: be able to get out of it. But they get
Speaker 4: out of that easily every single night when they go
Speaker 4: out to forge. When they were family.
Speaker 1: Oh, they sound so much cue to and there's a
Speaker 1: pile of them. I don't know why, like these they
Speaker 1: remind It reminds me of like when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: and like your neighbor's dog had puppies. They just that
Speaker 1: much of little teenage rats having a slumber party.
Speaker 4: Listen, they are cute and they make great pets. I'll
Speaker 4: just insert that right there for the record. They have wonderful,
Speaker 4: wonderful mammals.
Speaker 3: Have you had rats and pets?
Speaker 4: Yes, I have. I've had different rodents here and there
Speaker 4: when I was especially when I was younger. And but
Speaker 4: but I have to tell you there, you know, I
Speaker 4: had six brothers, two sisters, and I didn't go over
Speaker 4: well because they smell if you don't clean the bedding regularly.
Speaker 4: And you know all of this. But but if you
Speaker 4: can do it, they make great pets.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, how precious is he? Also, if you're ready
Speaker 1: to make a rat your best friend, consider getting a
Speaker 1: pair of BFFs, as rats love to chill and kick.
Speaker 2: It with their butts.
Speaker 1: Now, there are so so many varieties and subspecies of
Speaker 1: brown rat, including the white rats that you think of
Speaker 1: when you're picturing like a research animal. But apparently mouse
Speaker 1: models are much more common in medical trials that involve
Speaker 1: our poor rodent friends. Although all mammals descended from a
Speaker 1: common relative eighty million years ago. So are genomes and
Speaker 1: guts and organs pretty analogous. Now, what's the difference between
Speaker 1: a mouse and a rat? I know you want to know.
Speaker 1: So rats they're bigger, they're more cautious, and mice they
Speaker 1: got pointier little noses. They're littler, and they're more curious.
Speaker 1: But what if you only have evidence of them, i e.
Speaker 1: Their butt confetti to go by. Well, mice smaller and
Speaker 1: pointier turds.
Speaker 2: Rats are more.
Speaker 1: Blunt and larger, but roof rats or black rats are
Speaker 1: kind of in the middle of both. I hope this
Speaker 1: knowledge never comes in handy for you. And what about
Speaker 1: movies with rats? Are there any that you feel I
Speaker 1: get it right? Like Ratitui, the rats of nim that
Speaker 1: you that you feel like they get rats?
Speaker 2: They did a good job.
Speaker 4: Well, since you mentioned Ratitue, I would I would concur
Speaker 4: I would actually say Ratitue did get it right. They
Speaker 4: did great graphics. They really closely mimicked their body movements
Speaker 4: and their gestures. So I was very impressed with Ratatue.
Speaker 4: And I was also impressed with the message of Ratitui.
Speaker 4: How we have to come up with better ways of
Speaker 4: coexisting on this planet than the way we're doing it
Speaker 4: right now. So and other movies, you know, sadly for
Speaker 4: the rats, they tend to turn them into these horrible
Speaker 4: villains and you know, these monsters that are waiting to
Speaker 4: attack you. And most of the movies have actually sadly
Speaker 4: given rats a bad name.
Speaker 1: What about myths about New York City rats that you
Speaker 1: would love to dispel.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the one to hear the most. And
Speaker 4: in fact, you're probably seeing the recent press about a
Speaker 4: certain restaurant and avocados and this kind of thing, and
Speaker 4: you know, people turn them into for example, that particular article,
Speaker 4: they weren't just rats, what were they? They were ginormous rats, right, ginormous?
Speaker 4: What kind of a word, you know. But in New
Speaker 4: York City, the big myth is it seems like every
Speaker 4: headline editor that writes the story about the rats has
Speaker 4: to outdo the other story in size. So they're gigantic, ginormous,
Speaker 4: they're super they're huge, you know, monstra size. But the
Speaker 4: fact of the matter is ali the average rat is
Speaker 4: not anything of great size. You know, I even have
Speaker 4: a bed out. If anyone ever brings me a two
Speaker 4: pound rat, two pound Norway rat, I will write them
Speaker 4: a check for five hundred dollars. You know, it's never
Speaker 4: going to happen. It's never going to happen. So the
Speaker 4: biggest myth is they don't get to be super rats
Speaker 4: or big giant, ginormous rats. There's no such thing.
Speaker 1: Oh that was one question that so many patrons asked,
Speaker 1: and so we got that out of the way.
Speaker 4: The rats story I hear more than others. When I'm
Speaker 4: out doing surveys. People say what are you doing. I say, well,
Speaker 4: I'm surveying for rats and so forth, and some personals
Speaker 4: cut You know. I heard there was a guy five
Speaker 4: years ago. He's a friend of a friend of a
Speaker 4: cousin's second brother, and he once went down into a
Speaker 4: sewer to check on something and he never came out again.
Speaker 4: You know, they never saw him again, but they saw
Speaker 4: all his bones, and they think the rats ate him alive.
Speaker 4: That one I get all the time, and they say
Speaker 4: it the most straight face. It's like it's true. They
Speaker 4: keep saying it's true, it's true, But they never I
Speaker 4: say what was the person's name. Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 4: He's a friend of a friend of a friend.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: Inside note, if you listened to last week's Tentrology update
Speaker 1: with Casey. Now you know why I left in his
Speaker 1: story about the guy falling into a pit of rats.
Speaker 1: But to be fair, just this past October, a chasm
Speaker 1: did open up on a Bronx sidewalk and plunged a
Speaker 1: man into a pit of rats, And many of us
Speaker 1: honestly probably didn't even hear about it or remember it
Speaker 1: because just twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: And I say, oh, very interesting, Wow, that's fascinating. But
Speaker 4: you know, it seems like we don't have too many
Speaker 4: funny stories about rat because we hate them so much
Speaker 4: or people love to hate them again sadly for the rats.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you sometimes hear about if you die
Speaker 1: alone and you have a cat, your cat will sadly
Speaker 1: make a meal of you. But if you die in
Speaker 1: a big apartment, will the rats be like, well no
Speaker 1: one else is eating this?
Speaker 2: Will that happen to you?
Speaker 4: You know, mammals right, including humans, as you probably know,
Speaker 4: if you die, you know, and I've slept in barns
Speaker 4: with rats literally from my peak. And so people say, well,
Speaker 4: what are you doing? Suppose they'll attack you and eat you,
Speaker 4: And said, as long as there's other foods that they
Speaker 4: normally have. That's dependable. They're not gonna They're not gonna
Speaker 4: attack me and eat me. And that's the same. However,
Speaker 4: of course, if they locked up that barn that I
Speaker 4: used to sleep in and we took away all the
Speaker 4: rats food and I was the only warm thing in
Speaker 4: there with muscle tissue, of course they're going to eat me,
Speaker 4: same as humans have done in the course of history.
Speaker 4: Occasionally there's been stories of human cannibalistic events. So that's
Speaker 4: what mammals do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good to know, I think, yes.
Speaker 1: And can I ask you questions from listeners?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 1: Oh, we have so many people are so excited. They're
Speaker 1: also excited about you. In particular, people are like, oh
Speaker 1: you got Bobby Corgan.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So people are very excited.
Speaker 4: Gee, I know.
Speaker 1: Y'all A globally lauded rat expert. Answers your questions, but
Speaker 1: first a quick break to make a donation to the
Speaker 1: cause of the rodentologists choosing and this week doctor Bobby
Speaker 1: Corgan directed it toward a personal cause, the Yash Gandhi Foundation,
Speaker 1: in honor of his nephew Peter and his wife Sarah
Speaker 1: Krrigan and their baby daughter Adelaide, who suffers from a
Speaker 1: very rare inherited condition called muco libidosis two, which is
Speaker 1: also known as I cell disease. There's no treatment or
Speaker 1: cure right now, and the yash Gandhi Foundation is a
Speaker 1: nonprofit that directs one percent of donations to I sell
Speaker 1: research and Peter and Sarah give Little adelaide a hug
Speaker 1: from US at ologies, and that donation was made possible
Speaker 1: by sponsors of the show, who you may hear about
Speaker 1: now vio words coming out of my rat hole. Okay,
Speaker 1: your questions, okay, So the following patrons Eli j R.
Speaker 1: J Deutge, that's good, Guda Jason Miller's ex smul and
Speaker 1: Julie Baird, Steve C. Megan Jounce all wanted to know
Speaker 1: how big are we talking?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Zachary Peterson said, my dad used to work a job
Speaker 1: in which he cleaned sewers and apparently the rats in
Speaker 1: LA can get to the size of housecats. Is this
Speaker 1: a real thing or flim flamb? But are rats in
Speaker 1: different parts of the country bigger than others?
Speaker 4: No, they're not. You know, there's only two species and
Speaker 4: I've been in La a lot, so I've done rat
Speaker 4: surveys in LA and out your way. In LA, there's
Speaker 4: roof rats, the black rat. It's also called anenoi rat,
Speaker 4: the brown rat. So here in New York City we
Speaker 4: only have the brown rat. So but in LA the
Speaker 4: rats are the sewers. Both species will use the sewers.
Speaker 4: In LA. What he will notice is when you are
Speaker 4: in a sewer and haven't been down there, and it's
Speaker 4: the light's not great, and you get close to a
Speaker 4: rat and a sewer by mistake, which have done many
Speaker 4: many times, the rats frightened. So what does the rat do? Ali,
Speaker 4: when it's frightened, it does what it's like if you
Speaker 4: of cats. So you know cats, they raise the hackles,
Speaker 4: h right. And so the rats I saw when I
Speaker 4: first wanted to, I would say the same thing. I'd
Speaker 4: come out there. It's like, oh my god, I saw
Speaker 4: a rat today. There was big as an alley cat. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because the rat was like, whoa, there's a predator standing
Speaker 4: right next to me. Try to look big and scary,
Speaker 4: which they did success.
Speaker 1: Yes, Somewhere right now, there's a bear in Yellowstone telling
Speaker 1: its friends that it saw an eight foot tall, puffy
Speaker 1: human that spits spicy venom in its face and all
Speaker 1: the bears are like.
Speaker 4: What But that's a little trick, isn't it, Like try
Speaker 4: to make yourself look big and like a lot of
Speaker 4: handling time for the predator, you know, and predators make
Speaker 4: decisions on that. They'll say, look, you know what, that's
Speaker 4: too big a fight for me to have a meal,
Speaker 4: so I'll look for something easier to handle.
Speaker 1: Oh, they're all fluff and they're just scared, frightened fluff.
Speaker 4: That's a good way to put it. They are they're fluff.
Speaker 1: And you know, we were talking about Southern California rats
Speaker 1: and patron Theresa Dizazzo, who is a first time question
Speaker 1: asker since living in southern California. We have these critics
Speaker 1: called tree rats or roof rats, and they hunker down
Speaker 1: in car engines over the winter months and they chew
Speaker 1: wires and fluid lines and what can you do to
Speaker 1: dissuade them from using undercarriages? And I actually had this
Speaker 1: problem myself. I had a prius and I heard that
Speaker 1: they would lubricate the wire harnesses with peanut oil and
Speaker 1: that they would love to get in there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we cracked open my hood and found like an orange
Speaker 1: and some snails. How do you dissuade them from living
Speaker 1: in your car?
Speaker 4: You know, it's it's a real problem, to be honest
Speaker 4: with you. I have a barn, and I have a
Speaker 4: tractor net barn, and it has wires, and I'm gonna
Speaker 4: you know, I have this farm in addition to where
Speaker 4: I am and same thing, So I get it. And
Speaker 4: the roof rats of California love to get into those cars.
Speaker 4: For sure. They go up by the wheelbase, they climb
Speaker 4: on top of the air filter, and they will bring
Speaker 4: food in there, they'll eat in there, and they will
Speaker 4: nor on the wires regularly. So there's no product, for example,
Speaker 4: that you can buy that's going to really dissuade them
Speaker 4: from doing that. However, now I tell everybody, look, do
Speaker 4: the best you can, especially if you have a garage.
Speaker 4: It's not difficult to road improof your garage. That's pretty
Speaker 4: darn simple to do that. So keep them out. Don't
Speaker 4: store any food in that garage that's going to bring
Speaker 4: them in there so where they want to get up
Speaker 4: unneath that hood. And finally, if you can for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: and there are cases where there's lots of rats, lots
Speaker 4: of mice that start visiting the garages or the car
Speaker 4: ports is if you can, if you just leave your
Speaker 4: hood open at night, propped open, it usually discouraged them
Speaker 4: from doing that completely. If that's even the worst thing there,
Speaker 4: then sometimes you can just you can put out little
Speaker 4: bags morth balls and pick them up every day put
Speaker 4: them back out. It's annoying. It's we all like to
Speaker 4: get into a car and drive away. So but if
Speaker 4: you live in an area where there's rodents and they're
Speaker 4: bothering your car, you just gotta go those few extra steps.
Speaker 2: I thought you might appreciate that.
Speaker 1: L Hoffman says that when I lived in Queen's I
Speaker 1: take my car to the shop and they found a
Speaker 1: rat's nest with chewed wires and five whole and banadas
Speaker 1: in the engine, and they sent pictures and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to die next like that's a haul man, I
Speaker 1: don't even know as it's excellent.
Speaker 4: Thanks Hoffman for sharing that. It's very cool.
Speaker 1: Five a whole, It's like that seems like that would
Speaker 1: last a week. That's like going to Costco for a rat.
Speaker 4: It's amazing us to thinking I'm not going to be
Speaker 4: able to get out for a couple of days. A
Speaker 4: better go grocery shopping.
Speaker 1: Okay, math break, how long would five and panadas last
Speaker 1: one rat?
Speaker 2: Calories wise? Okay?
Speaker 1: So well, apparently one city rat needs an ounce of
Speaker 1: food or twenty eight grams a day to survive. And
Speaker 1: I know twenty eight grams of food can vary greatly
Speaker 1: and caloric density and water content. But let's just say
Speaker 1: a single rat living in your Nissan needs twenty eight
Speaker 1: grams of empanadas a.
Speaker 3: Day to survive.
Speaker 2: So I looked it up.
Speaker 1: The average empanada, all that glorious pastry and cheesy, meaty filling,
Speaker 1: weighs in at around eighty nine grams, meaning that the
Speaker 1: rat in.
Speaker 2: The car was stocked up.
Speaker 1: For two fortnights or a full moon cycle of munching. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it's just like high tailing it to costco plus the
Speaker 1: world is your free sample now? Speaking of tails, by
Speaker 1: the way, patrons Diana Burgess and Heidi Wright had some
Speaker 1: questions as well as Amelia Hunter wants to know why
Speaker 1: are rat tails hairless?
Speaker 4: You know, some of the different species rats have quite
Speaker 4: a bit of fur on them depending on the species,
Speaker 4: and with the commensal rodents to say city rodents, the
Speaker 4: ones domestic by us over time, you know, having a
Speaker 4: coat of fur over that tail is not advantageous because
Speaker 4: in city areas and you're going through sewers, you're going
Speaker 4: through garbage, you're going through dirty areas. And if if
Speaker 4: you have a lot of fur on that tail, you
Speaker 4: can imagine what's gonna happen. You're gonna have junk throughout
Speaker 4: that thing, You're gonna have things stuck to it, You're
Speaker 4: gonna have all kinds of stuff that you're constantly gonna
Speaker 4: have to clean off. So over time, the rodents, you know,
Speaker 4: for these burrowing activities and being involved with areas with
Speaker 4: lots of stuff in the ground, no doubt, just evolved
Speaker 4: to having no fur, not much hair. But you know
Speaker 4: they do have sparse hairs on that tail and it's
Speaker 4: but it's called a scaly tail for them, for that
Speaker 4: particular species and for the millennia of their life, they
Speaker 4: just have to that space is not having a lot
Speaker 4: of for to get catching things.
Speaker 1: Imagine like keeping your hair long and loose when you
Speaker 1: work in an open concept taffy factory. Just no buzz it. Also,
Speaker 1: speaking of sticky situations, though ratkings are debated as flim flam,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of photographic evidence on squirrel kings.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're bushy, luxurious tails.
Speaker 1: Can catch sap in a nest and then before you
Speaker 1: know it, a bunch of juveniles are joined at the
Speaker 1: tangly butts and it's the saddest animal video I've ever
Speaker 1: maybe ever seen. But they have been able to take
Speaker 1: them into vets and sedate them and buzz cut them.
Speaker 1: But yes, squirrel kings, they are a thing, and I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I have broken your heart.
Speaker 2: Let's change the subject to.
Speaker 1: Giant prehistoric Amazonian rainforest rats that lived ten million years
Speaker 1: ago and weighed as much as an uncle one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five pounds, but they had just teeny tiny
Speaker 1: four ounce kind of like its modern cousin, the jim
Speaker 1: rat kid. I don't know how to count macros or
Speaker 1: lift things, so jokes on me. Now, this hulking rodent
Speaker 1: beast we're talking about ten million years ago was a marvel.
Speaker 1: But before you rent a time machine to check it out,
Speaker 1: please know that here still sauntering on Earth. The largest
Speaker 1: rodent of unusual size is the capibera, and they don't
Speaker 1: f around. They weigh up to one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pounds of ripped rodent. And now, okay, I know this
Speaker 1: episode is about Rattus Rattus black, or the roof rat,
Speaker 1: and the poorly named Norwegian or brown rat that has
Speaker 1: become the dominant city species.
Speaker 2: But let's not forget that we still need episodes.
Speaker 1: On the other two thousand or so species of rodents,
Speaker 1: like porcupines and beavers and chinchillas and squirrels who once again,
Speaker 1: squirrels still have that posterior mane unlike their sleek city cousins.
Speaker 1: And I imagine though, if they've kept the length on
Speaker 1: the scaly tail, it must serve a purpose in terms
Speaker 1: of like a sensory type of organ or for balance,
Speaker 1: Like what are they using that tail for? Because it's
Speaker 1: so long?
Speaker 4: I know, I know, but it serves them well. Alli,
Speaker 4: you know that. You know if you look at, say,
Speaker 4: the roof rats of California, you know they are experts
Speaker 4: that negotiating wines and wires and anything, you know, twigs
Speaker 4: and tree branches. You know, because that particular rit evolves
Speaker 4: from around Vietnam where it's going up and down the
Speaker 4: forest jungle of vines and trees and this kind of thing.
Speaker 4: So if you watch them do it you will see
Speaker 4: they take that tail, that long tail, and they wrap
Speaker 4: it around whatever they're climbing on. So it gives them
Speaker 4: this stability for a very thin you know, doing the
Speaker 4: tyrope act. So the tail really serves all three species
Speaker 4: of the urban rodents very well in helping them when
Speaker 4: they need it to balance on very narrow services and
Speaker 4: wires and so forth. And the other thing the tail
Speaker 4: does that a lot of people may not realize is
Speaker 4: it's a thermal regula. So you know, when when these
Speaker 4: are small mammals, they have a very high surface volume
Speaker 4: to low body mass, and you know, on hot days,
Speaker 4: for example, these mammals can help regulate their body temperature
Speaker 4: by keeping the tail away from the body. And it's
Speaker 4: a large surface volume, so it dissipates the body heat
Speaker 4: and on you know, at least for those of us
Speaker 4: in the East Coast here in temperate areas when it's cold,
Speaker 4: and they'll take that tail and they'll put it below
Speaker 4: their body and sit on it, so to speak, so
Speaker 4: they don't lose that heat through the tail. So it's
Speaker 4: a thermal regulating organ as much as it's balance, and
Speaker 4: it gives them sometimes they need to stand up on
Speaker 4: their haunches and they'll plant that tail out and it
Speaker 4: gives them an anchor from which to stand up without
Speaker 4: you know, losing their their balance and falling over.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think it's I think it must startle humans
Speaker 1: because it just looks like such a long finger.
Speaker 4: Yes, and the other thing, you know, you're alluding to
Speaker 4: to some degree, and since your ologies that you probably
Speaker 4: have done this. But a lot of the reasons we
Speaker 4: don't like this mammal or people are fearful of it,
Speaker 4: or they're disgust of it is the other sadly animal
Speaker 4: we love to hate on the planet Earth are snakes,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of people say, oh, the tail
Speaker 4: grosses me out. It's like they have a snake behind them.
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, my goodness, the rats can't win.
Speaker 3: That's so true.
Speaker 1: It must just strike something where it's like there's a
Speaker 1: snake made out of human skin attached to its butt
Speaker 1: and we just like freak out like a finger snake
Speaker 1: on its butt. We have so many good questions. I
Speaker 1: was going through this list. I was just like, how
Speaker 1: am I going to pair this down. Jessica Flowers is
Speaker 1: a first time question asker and says I've heard that
Speaker 1: rats have extremely strong teeth. What causes them to be
Speaker 1: so strong? And some else asked about their bite strength
Speaker 1: comparing to a crocodiles. Do they have really strong jaws?
Speaker 4: They do, you know, And that's a great question. You
Speaker 4: know the rodent The word rodent ali means to gnaw gnaw,
Speaker 4: which are different. By the way, is chewing. People say
Speaker 4: they chew on things. Well, you know, scientifically, gnawing's one thing,
Speaker 4: chewing is another.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's the difference. So to gnaw is to bite
Speaker 1: and to chew is to crush with molders. Also, I
Speaker 1: didn't know where to mention this in this episode, but
Speaker 1: I read that rats can get through any hole the
Speaker 1: size of their heads because their ribs can collapse when
Speaker 1: they squeeze through things and then just spring back up
Speaker 1: on the other side. Anyway, back to their mouths. So,
Speaker 1: Jessica Flowers, first time question asker, you are about to
Speaker 1: hear exactly how strong rat teeth are. It's my gift
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 4: So to gnaw on things, they're tools. So they have
Speaker 4: these powerful in sizes upper and lower in sizors that
Speaker 4: have no roots, so they keep growing because they need
Speaker 4: them to gnaw into tree trunks and to get a
Speaker 4: rock out of the way or to you know, climb.
Speaker 4: They will actually climb up a rock wall with using
Speaker 4: their teeth like when we do rock climbing with picks
Speaker 4: and axes. So they're very, very strong. As the questioner asks,
Speaker 4: they've been measured exerting pressures seven thousand pounds per square
Speaker 4: inch of pressure, which is tremendous. And I've been bitten
Speaker 4: once where they in a sewer where they got hold
Speaker 4: of my fingers. I thought my hand was in a
Speaker 4: vice that someone was tightening, So it's extremely powerful.
Speaker 1: By contrast, a crocodile's weeny limp bite force is thirty
Speaker 1: seven hundred psi and gummy adult lions can only bite
Speaker 1: at six hundred and fifty psi. So what's the humans
Speaker 1: bite force? You wonder? One hundred and twenty six. So
Speaker 1: we suck, we you suck, We both suck. We are
Speaker 1: the lampreeze of the mammal world. And we know this
Speaker 1: because there exists something called a Natho dynamometer, which is
Speaker 1: a device used to measure bite force. So yes, first
Speaker 1: time question asker Zoe Crankshaw, who has a rat living
Speaker 1: on their high rise balcony. It did sort of climb
Speaker 1: up the walls like a tiny spider man, but with
Speaker 1: its face. They don't even need radioactive material to give
Speaker 1: them superpowers. They just have evolution and and panadas.
Speaker 4: You know, they bite it six bites per second, so
Speaker 4: very fast, very fast, And so that the whole thing
Speaker 4: of when someone is just rodent, What do people think
Speaker 4: about those two prominent teeth when the camera takes a
Speaker 4: picture of an front side of this animal, those big
Speaker 4: powerful in sizes uppers and low is just jutting out
Speaker 4: at you, you know, and that can really get your
Speaker 4: attention really fast.
Speaker 1: Do you ever have to worry about anything communicable? We
Speaker 1: have a lot of different listeners and I will say
Speaker 1: their names and an aside, so trends who asked about
Speaker 1: ratty infections were many, specifically Ashley, Emmanuel Dominic Lee, Elena Lytton,
Speaker 1: Big Doctor Corgan Fan, Derek Allen, Julie Bear, Maria Jerifleva,
Speaker 1: Alicia Penny, Kendra Saint Clair, Forrest Stotts, who also referred
Speaker 1: to rats nests as massive cuttle puddles, and patrons who
Speaker 1: were plagued with questions about a specific disease. Ryan Clark
Speaker 1: Earl of gramlcan Bear Hodge twenty two. And how do
Speaker 1: you write, who wrote has anyone asked about the plague yet?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Who asked about plague and hauntavirus?
Speaker 1: Anything out there right now that people would be concerned about?
Speaker 2: Or is that something of the past?
Speaker 4: Well, another great question it you know wrote, ins in
Speaker 4: general hang out in these dirty splaces, right, sewers, garbage, rotting, squalor,
Speaker 4: they run through the curves and they they're always involved
Speaker 4: with scavenging on all kinds of things. So any animal
Speaker 4: like that that lives in the wild and I occupies
Speaker 4: and visits you know, filth and dirt, you know, that's
Speaker 4: where our bacteria and grow. That's where dangerous pathogens of
Speaker 4: different sorts are going to be found, if you will.
Speaker 4: So the problem is with rats and cities, and no
Speaker 4: matter even if you are a millionaire living a beautiful
Speaker 4: millionaire home and this kind of thing, you're only as
Speaker 4: good as whether or not that garage door is roading proof,
Speaker 4: because you can have a rat come out of the
Speaker 4: sewer right outside that of state and squeeze banola, squeeze
Speaker 4: below a garage door, and now trample all over your
Speaker 4: kitchen so they have the potential to transmit viruses we
Speaker 4: all know about COVID of course. Well, rats themselves have
Speaker 4: been found to carry novel viruses of all different sorts,
Speaker 4: including coronaviruses. But good news is not this coronavirus. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's the good news. So far we haven't found but
Speaker 4: this research going on right now, by the way, But
Speaker 4: they do carry other diseases. You know, food born illness
Speaker 4: is a major disease where we've all been there where
Speaker 4: you maybe eat something someday and you're sick for two
Speaker 4: days and you're vomiting and diarrhea. Those are usually caused
Speaker 4: by food born illness bacteria like salmonella, to give an example.
Speaker 4: They also, you know, they carry a disease called leptos sporrosis,
Speaker 4: which we lost two people in New York City three
Speaker 4: years ago from ratborn leptose sporrosis. So their public health pest,
Speaker 4: there's no doubt about that. Their public health pest. In
Speaker 4: Los Angeles. You probably know, just two years ago there's
Speaker 4: a typhus outbreak in downtown Los Angeles and I was
Speaker 4: out there looking at that situation, and so you know
Speaker 4: that's associated with rats.
Speaker 2: What is the clepto porosis.
Speaker 1: Well, I asked the Google, and it's a bacterial infection
Speaker 1: of the blood and it's contracted from p Also, dogs
Speaker 1: can get it.
Speaker 2: There's also typhus outbreaks. Equally no good. But wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 2: don't you give.
Speaker 1: Up on rats because they may not have even been
Speaker 1: to blame for plagues. Historians in the last few years
Speaker 1: are starting to look at disease models that point the
Speaker 1: finger to human life and human fleas. So rats, it
Speaker 1: is we who have done you dirty.
Speaker 4: The point is we need to keep in perspective. But
Speaker 4: there's two diseases we do not have to worry about
Speaker 4: with rats. One is plague. Oh, even though they are
Speaker 4: associated with historically with the plague of the medieval times,
Speaker 4: that's not going to happen anymore these days. And the
Speaker 4: other one is rabies. Everyone asks me if they get
Speaker 4: bit by a mouse or a rats or they get
Speaker 4: Raby's treatments, And the answer is no, you would never
Speaker 4: get Rabi's treatments for being bitten by any of the
Speaker 4: rats in the United States. They just do not align
Speaker 4: themselves with that particular virus. I don't know so, but
Speaker 4: other than that, it's about fifty five fifty six diseases
Speaker 4: other diseases that you just don't want to play disease
Speaker 4: lottery with these guys. Yeah right, So keep them out
Speaker 4: of your buildings and keep your garbage clean and you
Speaker 4: won't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1: Jessica Fritz and Jesse Dragon both want to know what
Speaker 1: are your thoughts on the use of rodents as land
Speaker 1: mind sniffers, like the hero rats.
Speaker 4: Well, see, and that's a different species, you know, that's
Speaker 4: you know, it's the Gambian pouchtrat. That's a very cool,
Speaker 4: very cool rodent, as we all know because for the
Speaker 4: landmine work, it's it's incredible what they do. And there's
Speaker 4: a great example of the utility of using the rodents
Speaker 4: to help us in dramatic ways. So I think it's
Speaker 4: a world of research. Ali still waiting there as to
Speaker 4: the things we can use rodents for, but have not
Speaker 4: thought about doing it now. So the Gambian pousetrat, the
Speaker 4: hero rat, is an example of like, look, take that
Speaker 4: principle and maybe we can take city rats as an example,
Speaker 4: and maybe we would be able to put them to
Speaker 4: work with some practical job and make them work for
Speaker 4: us to some degree. And it would at least change
Speaker 4: the paradigm of they're all bad, they're all evil, they're
Speaker 4: all dangerous. But we haven't we haven't begun to really
Speaker 4: test that animal in terms of its utility, but it
Speaker 4: has great potential in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they really deserve so much respect for being such
Speaker 1: generalists and so adaptable and just being smart enough to survive.
Speaker 1: I always feel this way about anyone who lives in
Speaker 1: New York anyway. I'm like, if you you know, if
Speaker 1: you can make it in New York, you can't make
Speaker 1: it anywhere.
Speaker 3: Same with the rats.
Speaker 1: It's, you know, not an easy city to live in,
Speaker 1: and it's like, if you can hack it there respect
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it may be right. It'd be interesting to see
Speaker 4: who can help it out more La Rats or New
Speaker 4: York City rats.
Speaker 1: I know, although there is a lot of pressure on
Speaker 1: La rats to make their tails look thinner with contour
Speaker 1: and you know, whisker extensions. It's brutal out here, man,
Speaker 1: and you know, el Hoffman had another question, first time
Speaker 1: question ask for again, and as a New Yorker, I've
Speaker 1: heard that the rats in the subway are actually the
Speaker 1: alpha rats because it's the best place to live and
Speaker 1: the sidewalk rats are the weaker rats that can't cut
Speaker 1: it in the subway.
Speaker 2: Is there any truth to this.
Speaker 4: Well, here's the thing. It's actually the opposite. Really. Yes, yes,
Speaker 4: the subway. There are rats in the subway, but we
Speaker 4: did a four year study of the rats in the subway,
Speaker 4: by the way, and I can tell you that the
Speaker 4: subway is not a preferred habitat for the rats. Really really,
Speaker 4: when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Even though
Speaker 4: you're down below ground and the tunnels are dark and
Speaker 4: every it's an environment that is difficult for a rat
Speaker 4: to find good nesting areas. The food isn't constantly abundant
Speaker 4: unless there's a really dirty subway. And in the past
Speaker 4: that might have been. But these days they have sweep
Speaker 4: of trains and they have advanced garbage collection processes, and
Speaker 4: the trains come by every two minutes. You got to
Speaker 4: scurry away and so forth. So the subways they are there,
Speaker 4: they're everywhere, but it's not a preferred habitat. And the
Speaker 4: ones below the sidewalks upstairs, if you will, if they
Speaker 4: had the right sidewalk and they found a small hole
Speaker 4: from which they can duck down into and come out
Speaker 4: at night and get to the garbage that's right on
Speaker 4: the curb. It's a much easier lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Do they have to kind of fight for those different
Speaker 1: habitats or is it like you were born into a
Speaker 1: nest that was above ground, lucky you.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, it's just like us, right. So the best
Speaker 4: real estate is usually a very well protected nests close
Speaker 4: by good food that's very dependable night after night. So
Speaker 4: once that's located and the rats start reproducing, and once
Speaker 4: they start reproducing and they say, look, food is always
Speaker 4: here and it's close by to the bed, and the
Speaker 4: bed is well protected, we are going to defend this
Speaker 4: to the end. That's the way it goes. Is real estate,
Speaker 4: real estate, real estate.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that it's just like location location, Okation,
Speaker 1: sure is. And I love this question Alex L. Rachel Noble,
Speaker 1: Ira Gray, Bennett Gerber. A bunch of people wanted to know, essentially,
Speaker 1: has anyone ever done a study on different cities subway
Speaker 1: rats to see if they've developed regional food preferences?
Speaker 2: Asked Rachel Noble.
Speaker 1: I Regray says, is it true that rats in different
Speaker 1: cities have different junk food preferences?
Speaker 2: Like when you bait traps.
Speaker 1: You have to use different foods depending on the region.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 4: It is true? No, yes it is. And in fact,
Speaker 4: some really great scientists out of Fordham University here an
Speaker 4: urban ecology scientists. They did some studies and others as well,
Speaker 4: where you know, if you go up, let's just say,
Speaker 4: and for twenty years, your colonies have been forging whatever.
Speaker 4: And let's just say we'll pick any ethnicity you wish.
Speaker 1: So rats, as a turnout, sleep just one hundred to
Speaker 1: two hundred feet away from their food source. Their commute
Speaker 1: is nothing, and in their whole life they rarely travel
Speaker 1: more than six hundred feet from their birthplace. Homebodies cozy.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're a rat growing up near really
Speaker 1: good dim sum, and your mom's milk is like tastes
Speaker 1: like dam sum, it's your favorite.
Speaker 4: Dude, Let's say you go five miles uptown and all
Speaker 4: of a sudden you're in a European neighborhood where it's
Speaker 4: European style foods, you know, whatever it may be, whether
Speaker 4: they're in.
Speaker 3: A sauce, is the spaghetti mean bo.
Speaker 4: Tried a friend spaghetti day? You know, cities will have
Speaker 4: things that we some people will say this, right, we
Speaker 4: joked earlier, Oh, New York City is the best pizza?
Speaker 4: Well what is? You know, what's the food favorites of
Speaker 4: la or Saint Louis or Chicago and those rodents that
Speaker 4: have spent forty fifty years in those areas. Yes, they're
Speaker 4: probably going to have those food dialects established within their biology.
Speaker 1: Oh and how long does the city rat live? By
Speaker 1: the way, I forgot to ask that.
Speaker 4: Most on the average conditions, ALI, they're lucky. If they
Speaker 4: get a full year, they're very lucky. If they get
Speaker 4: a year, most lived nine months, ten months. Occasionally, you know,
Speaker 4: just like this occasion, you'll find people bring me these
Speaker 4: rats that look like, oh my goodness, they've been through
Speaker 4: a war. Some of the dominance will get a year
Speaker 4: and a half, two years. But it's a hard life
Speaker 4: to be a wild rat. And yeah, it's a hard life.
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's breakups and a lot of you wanted relationship advice
Speaker 1: from Bobby, including Jacqueline Hanavon, Jamie Jensen, Daniel Saltana, Paul Serilio,
Speaker 1: Uricott's juliez A Fierropolis, who's a first time question asker
Speaker 1: Jess Swan, Alani Yoel, Elizabeth Edwards, Nicole Halley, Hillary Larson,
Speaker 1: rare Press, Joyce Sanchez, Melanie Lee Jaden Auburn, who says
Speaker 1: I saw a rat dying from chemicals, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to cuddle it because it looked so sad and sick.
Speaker 1: Ps I did not cuddle the dying rat. Well done,
Speaker 1: Shandon and patron Dylan McGuire, who asked how do you
Speaker 1: exterminate or trap rodents on an industrial scale?
Speaker 2: Hand grenades, flamethrowers.
Speaker 1: So a lot of trapping and humane based inquiries naturally,
Speaker 1: And I feel like one question that is on so
Speaker 1: many listeners' minds is how do you feel about mouse traps?
Speaker 1: Asked Hillary Larson rare presses. What's the most humane way
Speaker 1: to trap and remove a house mouse? So many people
Speaker 1: say they respect them, but they don't want them. Say,
Speaker 1: for example, so many people asked toilet rats, is it
Speaker 1: possible that a rodent can get in your house via
Speaker 1: the toilet? Essentially, what can you do if you don't
Speaker 1: want the rat in your house?
Speaker 3: What's the best way to get.
Speaker 4: Rid of it? Yes? So I would say, because that
Speaker 4: question touches upon the being it's back to the right
Speaker 4: of touhy. I believe we need to be humane with
Speaker 4: these animals, even though you know they can carry disease,
Speaker 4: they can hurt us, they can burn our buildings down
Speaker 4: by knowing why. Nevertheless, we're smart enough to do this
Speaker 4: so that we don't have to resort to traps that
Speaker 4: capture them by the legs or by the head, and
Speaker 4: some of these barbaric means in this kind of thing.
Speaker 4: So the best way to be humane to this animal
Speaker 4: and also control it so it doesn't get close to
Speaker 4: you is if they're trying to get into your house,
Speaker 4: either through a toilet bowl or through the doors or
Speaker 4: through a hole. In this kind of thing, it's because
Speaker 4: they want to get to either harbord or food. The
Speaker 4: toilet bowl thing is it's not rare, but it's not
Speaker 4: that common. So it's if a rat was to come
Speaker 4: up through the tolls, which they do occasionally, that's something
Speaker 4: the city needs to be told. They need to inspect
Speaker 4: this who alignce and take care of that which they can.
Speaker 4: But every person that may be involved in ologies here
Speaker 4: and question answer is it is not difficult to do
Speaker 4: your garbage correctly. It is not difficult to keep your
Speaker 4: doors well sealed and close to the floor. It's not
Speaker 4: difficult just to not attract them to your property in
Speaker 4: the first place. So then you have to do something
Speaker 4: like trap them or poison them.
Speaker 1: And hopefully you don't have a neighbor who is just
Speaker 1: surrounded and take out containers.
Speaker 4: There's the rub, isn't it. We're only as good as
Speaker 4: the worst neighbor on our block.
Speaker 1: Aren't we, which I think in an urban environment, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just kind of don't know what's going on behind
Speaker 1: the well next to you. It is someone who lived
Speaker 1: in a duplex that had conroaches.
Speaker 2: Turns out neighborable us.
Speaker 1: Ah. Yes, just as the cream rises to the top,
Speaker 1: so do roaches and rats the second floor. This also
Speaker 1: was the same duplex in La where our furnace blew
Speaker 1: out so much carbon monoxide that when it also caught fire,
Speaker 1: the repair person told us in earnest that my roommates
Speaker 1: and I should have a party to celebrate that we
Speaker 1: did not die from it. The landlord, who is a heinous,
Speaker 1: toilet hearted garbage person, also tried to keep our security
Speaker 1: deposit because the house had termites.
Speaker 2: Go figure.
Speaker 1: But speaking of toilet people, let's get back to a
Speaker 1: great question which was asked by myself and patrons Courtney R.
Speaker 1: Catherine Gallipasarro, Megan Walker, and Emily H.
Speaker 3: This is one question I've always wanted to know toilet rats.
Speaker 1: How are they holding their breath to get through the
Speaker 1: actual toilet.
Speaker 4: You know, rats are great swimmers, in fact, outstanding swimmers,
Speaker 4: and so getting up the toilet from the sewer and
Speaker 4: going against the current, so to speak, is no problem.
Speaker 4: They can hold their breath for three and a half minutes, yes,
Speaker 4: and they that tail helps them. I watched rats fish
Speaker 4: in the Hudson River literally jump in the river, fish around, swim,
Speaker 4: capture little fishes, and come back up and eat them
Speaker 4: on the rocks.
Speaker 5: There was a seafood buffet you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 4: So they get up that toilet, it's not difficult whatsoever.
Speaker 4: They can stay afloat. The research I've seen on this was,
Speaker 4: you know, you can put a rat in a big
Speaker 4: tub with nothing to rest on and they will be
Speaker 4: able to stay like that for three days of treading water.
Speaker 4: So they're great swimmers.
Speaker 1: And I imagine Pizza Rat must have been a thrilling
Speaker 1: triumph for rats and rodenttolliges.
Speaker 2: Everywhere.
Speaker 3: But what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen a rat eating?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, they eat everything. But for me, you know,
Speaker 4: the pizza rat thing didn't surprise me all that much,
Speaker 4: even though it's cool and it has a cool stick
Speaker 4: to it, right, pizza rat, It just sounds cool. But
Speaker 4: I've watched a rat run down like Fifth Avenue one
Speaker 4: night years ago and in New York. I don't know
Speaker 4: if it is in LA. But we have these giant
Speaker 4: pretzels you can buy from the Prince Pretzel guy. I
Speaker 4: mean there's big as you know, they're the huge things.
Speaker 4: We usually break them up and tear them apart. We
Speaker 4: eat them in pieces. But here's this rat running down
Speaker 4: Fifth Avenue with a whole pretzel. He's bumping into things.
Speaker 4: He was hitting the walls, he was hitting you know,
Speaker 4: the garbage cans with it. He just wanted to get
Speaker 4: it home. So I was like, somebody should do pretzel rat.
Speaker 4: It's much better.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm so happy for that rat. Yeah on a score, imagine,
Speaker 1: imagine if you're to cal zone as big as you like,
Speaker 1: running through the.
Speaker 4: Streets, and it question is did he go back for
Speaker 4: the mustard thing? You know, that's the question. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, in all of your work, being a rodentologist,
Speaker 1: sleeping in barns to get your there must be something
Speaker 1: that is tough about it. What's the hardest thing about
Speaker 1: being an urban road intelligence.
Speaker 4: Well, now, as much as I'm hired to design programs
Speaker 4: to manage these rats and cities, the hardest part is,
Speaker 4: you know, is the rats are problem only because we
Speaker 4: as a species, we're supposed to be the smartest thing
Speaker 4: in this planet. I always tell people our name is
Speaker 4: Homo sapiens, right, but how sapient are we we? Here?
Speaker 4: We allow you know, our refuse to get away from us,
Speaker 4: and we plastic the ocean up and all these kinds
Speaker 4: of things. And so the saddest part for me, the
Speaker 4: hardest part of my job is I'm constantly looking at
Speaker 4: situations ALI where they say, yeah, we have a lot
Speaker 4: of rats in this part of the city, and for me,
Speaker 4: I'm like, what's said is we are the reason for
Speaker 4: this city having a lot of rats, not the rats.
Speaker 4: You know, they're just doing what they need to do.
Speaker 4: So it's this constant, sometimes downer to see like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, we should behave much better than we're doing,
Speaker 4: you know, and we wouldn't have to then go after
Speaker 4: this rat with these horrible poisons and stuff. The rat's
Speaker 4: super cool and on its own. If I'm in the
Speaker 4: woods and it's not disturbing anybody, and I see a
Speaker 4: rat living in the wild, and like, Bravo, bravo, you're
Speaker 4: a great, great species. Bravo.
Speaker 2: Rats gotta hand it to you.
Speaker 1: What about your favorite thing about rats? I know that's
Speaker 1: so hard because they're so cool and they have hands.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're tiny little mammals with hands. Like where
Speaker 1: do you start?
Speaker 4: I know, I know, I think the coolest thing that
Speaker 4: I love about the animals is, you know, and it
Speaker 4: is back to my barns where I learned this, you know,
Speaker 4: when I stayed in there with these rats and night
Speaker 4: after night just taking notes and watching them and laying
Speaker 4: on the floor and this kind of thing. You know,
Speaker 4: they are very very much like us, and we already
Speaker 4: know that since we gained so much from their medical research.
Speaker 4: But you know, I was able to watch rats be
Speaker 4: kind to each other. I watched rats bring each other,
Speaker 4: you know, gifts of food and just drop it there
Speaker 4: and walk away, which I said, that had to be
Speaker 4: kind of a fluke. They couldn't have done that on purpose. Well,
Speaker 4: now we know they do. They have altruism, they give
Speaker 4: to each other. You know, they have bad moods like
Speaker 4: you mentioned earlier, they laughed, they tick away of joy.
Speaker 4: So the best part is, you know, you know they're
Speaker 4: very super cool mammals and look how successful a they are.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't be that successful unless you were great at
Speaker 4: what you do, right, great at what you do, So
Speaker 4: you probably take a lot of pride in your work
Speaker 4: with ologies. I take pride in my work as rhetatologists.
Speaker 4: We try to be good at what we do well.
Speaker 4: The rats like, yep, been there, done that.
Speaker 1: You just maybe start crying thinking of them giving each
Speaker 1: other presents. It's so cute, it's so nice.
Speaker 4: They're just trying to live, that's right.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. And you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: are saying also there's a ratitude musical that they're trying
Speaker 1: to make on TikTok And Sarah Hunt wants to know,
Speaker 1: would you ever be interested in being a science consultant
Speaker 1: for rodent themed entertainment?
Speaker 4: You bet, sign me up. That sounds fabulous.
Speaker 2: You got to get you a TikTok account. Are you
Speaker 2: on there yet?
Speaker 4: I am not, he neither to say I'm not either.
Speaker 1: If I figure out TikTok, I will let you know
Speaker 1: how it works, and thank you.
Speaker 4: I would need to help believe me. Thank you, Ali again.
Speaker 4: It was very cool. When I saw ologies for the
Speaker 4: first time on toy, said how cool is this? You know?
Speaker 4: So I followed it at half a second.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you also like you have the handle rodentologists,
Speaker 1: Like it's so amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people say, is there really such a thing? I said,
Speaker 4: I hope. So I am one.
Speaker 1: So ask knowledgeable experts squeaky questions because life is short,
Speaker 1: We're all gonna die, and rats are smart and the
Speaker 1: answers might just make you weep in front of stranger
Speaker 1: So you can find doctor Robert Corgan aka please just
Speaker 1: call me Bobby on Twitter at rodentologist.
Speaker 2: He has the handle. Remember, I will link to.
Speaker 1: His handle as well as the charity and the sponsors
Speaker 1: will be linked in the show notes.
Speaker 3: I'm Ali Ward with just one L.
Speaker 1: On Twitter and on Instagram, do say hi and follow
Speaker 1: there and ologies is at ologies on both. You can
Speaker 1: become a patron of the show for a teeny tiny
Speaker 1: little dollar a month and submit questions. That's patreon dot com.
Speaker 1: Slash ologies Ologies Merch including face masks are available at
Speaker 1: Ologiesmerch dot com and that's managed by Shannon Feltas and
Speaker 1: Bonni Dutch, two sisters who host You Are That, which
Speaker 1: is a comedy podcast and they recently had the Doctor's
Speaker 1: Aaron on from the Epidemiology episode and from this podcast
Speaker 1: will Kill You, So check out You Are That. Thank
Speaker 1: you Aaron Helbert for adminting the Ologies podcast Facebook group
Speaker 1: so Beautifully. Thank you Emily White and the big group
Speaker 1: of transcribers for making transcripts available for free. The link
Speaker 1: to them is in the show notes. That are also
Speaker 1: bleeped episodes available for free of that link. Thank you
Speaker 1: Caleb Patton for doing the bleeping. Thank you Noel Dilworth
Speaker 1: for lining up the interviews and being like my second brain.
Speaker 1: And to assistant editor Jared Sleeper. And thank you of
Speaker 1: course to Stephen Ray Morris, who puts the show together
Speaker 1: every week. He also hosts The per Cast and See
Speaker 1: Jurassic Right, two podcasts about cats and Dino's respectively. And
Speaker 1: Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and he's in a
Speaker 1: band called Island, a very good band and if you
Speaker 1: stick around until the end of the episode, you know
Speaker 1: I share a secret and I'm getting nervous. I've been
Speaker 1: sitting on this news for several weeks because of the holidays,
Speaker 1: and then you know, just a little bit of chaos
Speaker 1: in Washington. It just didn't seem to be like a
Speaker 1: good time to go public. But Jared Sleeper and I
Speaker 1: have been really enamored of each other for almost a decade.
Speaker 1: But he is no longer my boyfriend.
Speaker 2: He is my fielce. I have sweaty palms telling.
Speaker 1: You so, yes, we're in got jed. So that's right,
Speaker 1: the man who wears wigs and short shorts to make
Speaker 1: quarantined workout videos and who is an excellent cook and
Speaker 1: poet and friend and an ally for justice.
Speaker 2: Just my ride or Di and that handsome gooper're done.
Speaker 1: Give me a special gem, and I'm very, very lucky
Speaker 1: to have found him. Your harry pod mom or step
Speaker 1: mom or I don't know, we'll figure that out. So
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four me Thanks for enjoying this encore. While
Speaker 1: I took the week and trapesed around New York looking
Speaker 1: at rats and saying I love you, I love you,
Speaker 1: little rat.
Speaker 2: All right, spooktober owits. There're some really good ones is here.
Speaker 1: And they're not scary. They're cute and spooky. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: byebye pacadermatology, homology, doo zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, paratology, methology, zeriology, elinology.
Speaker 5: Yes,