Prompt Cast
The Hidden Life of Rats in Cities: A Growing Problem during the Pandemic
TLDR Rat sightings in cities, including New York City, have doubled during the pandemic, revealing the extent of the rat population and their impact on urban environments. Rats, which originated in East Asia, have become commensal with humans and are carriers of diseases, making them a significant source of stress and anxiety for people.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
Rat sightings in New York City have doubled over the last year, prompting an investigation into the hidden life of rats and the ways in which they have filled the vacuum left by humans during the pandemic.
04:44
Rat sightings in cities have become a significant source of stress and anxiety for people, and rats have taken over major cities around the world, including New York City.
09:25
Dr. Jason Munchy South, a professor of biology at Fordham University, has been studying the effects of urbanization on wild animals and pest species like rats in New York City since 2008, and his research has revealed that the city is overrun by brown rats, which originated in East Asia thousands of miles away from Norway.
15:00
Brown rats became commensal with humans and started utilizing human foods, particularly grain, when agriculture began in China 11,000 years ago, and they spread across the globe by hitching rides on ships during the age of conquest in the 17th and 18th centuries.
19:48
Rats are social animals that can carry viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoans, making them undesirable in cities due to their association with diseases like the plague, which they were believed to have helped spread in Europe in the 1300s, and even today, some believe that London has more rats than humans.
25:04
In the Victorian era, rats were a constant threat in London and were even carried around by rich people in cages for gambling rings, and one of the most famous rat handlers was a man named Jack Black.
30:16
The brown rat arrived in London in the 1700s and quickly became a problem, thriving in the dirty city and coming into close contact with people, leading to the rise of rat catchers like Jack Black who caught rats alive and sold them for various purposes, such as rat baiting and as pets.
36:27
Rats were no longer seen as simply vermin in the 1960s, but rather as test subjects in laboratories that could help scientists develop life-saving drugs and gain a better understanding of illness and disease, which led some to believe that rats could even help address concerns about overpopulation.
42:52
John B. Calhoun conducted an experiment with rats in the 1960s to study the effects of living in a crowded environment, which resulted in the emergence of aggressive behavior, withdrawal, and high infant mortality rates, resembling the pathologies seen in crowded cities.
48:16
John B. Calhoun's experiment with rats led to the concept of the "behavioral sink," which describes the paradoxical attraction to crowded and potentially dangerous environments, but Calhoun later realized that the negative effects of overcrowding could be mitigated through better design and environments.
Categories:
History
Society & Culture
