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