Why Have Rats Outsmarted Us For So Long?

the money was going to rats. Rats literal rats, Like there were so many of them scarring around his warehouse that he just accepted that the rodents were going to eat his profits. And you think about it, right, this is Pablo Escobar, the most ruthless kingpin in the world, and he's happy to kill judges and police officers and anyone that's threatening his business. But even he's like, there's no way to beat rats. Let's just give them the

ten percent they deserve. That's how unstoppable rats are. I'd say, hey, there, podcast listeners, you're listening to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and I'm joined by my good friend Mangues show Ticketer and today we're asking why have rats out smart at us for so long? It's a good question, and listeners, I know it sounds disgusting, but I promise you this is going to be fascinating. We've packed this show with fun. We'll have writer A. J. Jacobs on in a little bit.

We've got a part Time Genius quiz coming up where a couple of our listeners can win some very big and very important prizes. So who do we invite to play in this episode? Mango? Today we asked for librarians and only librarians, and I think next week we're looking for accountants. That sounds right, yeah, and then I think it's pastry Chef's name Kyle. And anyway, be sure to follow us part Time Genius on all the social media thing he's you know, Twitter, Facebook, if you want to

come on and compete. So let's dive into today's question, Ango, what do you know about rats? Well, the first thing I learned is that there are some great titles out there about rats, including this book from the eighteen fifties called The Rat It's History and Destructive Character. I have to say that title does not sound pro rats. It isn't it's this famous book in rat studies, and it's great because you can tell that the author, James Rodwell,

has zero love for rats. Like one of the things he does is to challenge the reader to say the word rat slowly, just to confirm how terrible the word sounds. He calls it the foulest word in British zoology. You've got to try it. Um, yeah, it's it's not a pretty sounding word, I'll give you that. I know he's right, and it kind of sounds foul. So I got curious and started looking up synonyms in the thesaurus, and I realized there are no pleasant sounding alternatives for the word rat.

All right, give me something like, you know, vermin is one, rodents nars. It doesn't even sound like a word, but that's it. That's where the list stops. The only pleasant term I could find for rats was track bunny. I know. That's what subway workers call them when they see a rat on the subway line. You know, treck bunnies is almost a little too cute, I think, though, But I I get what you're saying. Rats have a terrible reputation

and could use some rebranding. I don't know, maybe like uh, like radio Shack rebranded itself the shack because shacks are in right now, I guess the shack. Uh Yeah. The fishing industry has done this with what they call trash fish, so instead of calling it the slime head, they renamed it the orange roughie. Or instead of the Patagonian toothfish, which just sounds disgusting, we've got the Chilean sea bass. Yeah,

I mean they're there are tons of these. I think my favorite is how the pil short goes by the name cornish sardine. I'd never eat a pil shirt, but a cornish starting I kind of want some, now, I know. I just pictured it on like a tiny fork. So that's what I'd love to do. Listeners, if you're up for it, We're going to run a little contest to come up with a new name for rats, something that acknowledges the critters are gross but also deserving of admiration.

And to the top five geniuses who come up with a rat replacement that's better than I don't know, uh, sewer kittens, We'll send you a tiny wheel of cheese. Alright, sewer kittens. Yes, Listeners, please write your suggestions for rebranding the rat and we'll honor you on our Facebook page. So just to get this out there, I'm totally creeped

out by rats, and it's because their germ elevators. We all know that rats carry ticks and lice with them, and throughout history they've carried diseases into food sources and into people's homes. But they're also just creepy to me. I mean, have you ever seen these videos of how rats squeeze their bodies under door frames and through tiny It's so gross. I know, that gelatinous body thing is

just so disgusting. Like octopuses can do that too. A good sized octopus can squeeze through a hole the size of a cherry tomato. And to be honest, as much as I hate rats, I would be so freaked out if my apartment had an octopus infestation, just a nest of baby octopus hanging out under the saints. Do you remember that Mitch Hedberg bit about how koalas would scatter whenever you turn on the lights in his apartment. That would be so much cuter than rats or octopus, I know,

so much more adorable. Here's something I never thought about. I was reading this book Rats by Robert Sullivan, and Sullivan makes this an analogy that if you see a grizzly bear, you know you're in the wilderness, right, like you never see a grizzly bear anywhere else. But what we don't often think about is that if you see a rat, it's also an indicator that humans are nearby, right right. I mean, it's no secret that rats thrive

by following human populations around. I mean, if you think about it, there really aren't natural predators to pick them off in the city. It's basically just rats versus humans. And just to be clear, while there are plenty of rats out there today, we're really focusing on the Norway rat, also known as the brown rat. Yeah, I we should clarify why we're homing in on the Norway at well.

I mean, there are black rats too, which are smaller and they tend to be located in warmer climates, But the brown rats are really the common ones most of us think about. I mean, you might have heard of warf rats or street rats, or barn rats or sewer rats, or even you've heard of all I've heard of all of them. Keep me keep a list. These are all just brown rats. I mean, the same rat goes by all these names because they're so adaptable. Yeah, that's right.

I mean basically any rat you've been worried about, including the ones that swim out of toilets. I know you're looking at me skeptically, but every year there are ten to fifteen reports of this in Portland, Oregon alone, So you've got to imagine that a good number of rats creep out of toilets across the US. I mean, Norway rats are great swimmers, and of course they're not really

from Norway. Yeah. I guess it's just one of those things where you want to blame another culture for the new type of grossness, like how the Germans called the German cockroach the Russian cockroach, and Russians call it the Prussian cockroach, and everyone's happy to blame it on somebody else. Which, by the way, the other part of that rats story is that the scientists in England name the rats Norway rats, even though they had come from Denmark, the Denmark part

of Norway. That's right. I mean he might have been a little bit bad at geography, but at the time Norway rats had not even yet invaded Norway. That's so weird. The other thing Sullivan mentions is a rule of thumb is that if you see a rat, it means there are ten more lurking nearby. And if you see a rat during the day, like on the subway tracks, then you're really in trouble because there's definitely a problem. Like

rats love to roam at night. They don't want to be seen, but if they're out running around, it means the population is stressed because there's too much competition for food. I never thought about it that way. Well, let's get down to it. So we know people hate rats, and we know they're lurking in bigger quantities than anyone sees. But why are rats so hard to control? I mean, one of the biggest reasons is that they populate so

darn't quickly. I heard this crazy thing that if you're in a city at any given moment, you're not that far from rats having sex. I can't even think. I'm not going to tell you where I heard it. I heard it somewhere. So but rats are really really good at mating. When rats aren't eating, all their due ing is having sex. I mean, there's there's no four play,

no berry White. It's just business. In fact, it's one of the biggest reasons rats are so hard to defeat, because a male Norway rat can have sex with twenty different partners in six hours. And the math on it's baffling. I mean, think about this, alright. So one pair of rats can churn out fifteen thousand descendants within a year.

Each letter then has eight to ten rats, and if the gestation period is only twenty one days, well that's a lot of rats that are then also eager to make this It's pretty gross, which makes you wonder why we aren't all in the rat catching business. I know. So while we're on the topic of rat sex, I've got to tell you about my favorite study on the subject.

There's this well regarded scientists from Cairo, amd Chfique, who's been dead for a while now, but he published this experiment in European Neurology where he tested the effects of various pant materials on the sex drive of rats. Let me get this straight. He made tiny pants for rats. He did the rats went topless, of course, but he took seventy five million rats and had tiny trousers custom

made for each of them. One group were a cotton pants, another war wool, another war a blend, and these rats they didn't get any less frisky. They just continued to get down. Except except for what, Except for the ones dressed in polyester. I mean, this is an amazing part. The ones outfitted in a polyester pants started losing their sex drive, or their confidences or something else. So I don't know. Maybe it's the chafing on their tiny rat bits that made them lose interests, or just being forced

to wear polyester. But let me get this straight. What you're saying is all we have to do to end our war with rats and get them to stop reproducing is to hire an army of tailors, have the millions of brown rats fitted for polyester trousers, and then sit back and watch the population blendle. That simple. Yeah, I mean, Nicky Mouse doesn't have kids, and if Disney just switched out his fabric and let his boys breathe a little, maybe he could start the family. His mom is always

naging him about. Brilliant And now it's time for a dramatic reading of America's foremost rat poet, Jack Handy, from his volume Squeaky Poems Rhymes about my rat. Look at her whiskers, look at her toes after you've rested, look at her nose. Thank you? So ango, who do we have on the line? So we have two librarians, Margaret

and Michael, going head to head in today's matchup. Now, we wanted librarians and only librarians today because librarians are known to be word people, and we will be playing a word game before we uh, before we get to that one, don't we introduce our two contestants. We have Margaret on the line. Margaret is a librarian at m I T. Margaret, welcome. You said that you actually appeared without your permission in a calendar of librarians, a calendar

of fictional librarians. But you're not fictional. No, I'm real at as far as I can tell. Michael, you are second contestant, and I want you to tell us what calendars you've appeared in. I've never appeared on a calendar. Well, okay, librarian exactly, all right. Well Michael, you are in Brooklyn. Tell us a little bit about what you do. Okay. I'm a reference librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library. That's awesome. And you also have a really interesting story though as well.

In addition to being a librarian, you've been an improv comic now for whatever a decade, yes, thirteen years. My specialty is working at the hospitals and nursing homes. I per form at hospitals and I hope run an improv workshop at a nursing home where the people themselves if you improv, anybody's interested in joining or contributing. It's www dot van ob doc work information. That's very very cool.

And I see, actually you do. One of your characters is a librarian, so we are now speaking to people

that play two fictional librarians. Do either of you have a favorite library in the world, I'm just supposed to pick one um in terms of just like Pure Knock, my soft soft best library experience I've ever had was visiting the British Library in London where they keep because they have like an enormous collection of historical manuscript and I remember I think I went from a letter uh signed by Queen Elizabeth, to a copy of the mc mccarta to the manuscript for Persuasion resting on Jane Austen's

writing descument. It's just like I had to sit down minutes and collect myself. That's pretty great. All right, Well, Mango, what game are are two contestants going to be playing today? So we're going to play a game called rat in the middle, all right. So the rules of the game are simple. Every answer is going to have the word rat in it. So, for example, we could ask about the second Star Trek movie because the word wrath and

wrath of con has the letters rat in it. We thought it would be fun because your librarians and you're used to the world of having to be rather quiet in your spaces, we thought we could let you, guys maybe chime in with animal noises if that works for you. So, um, Margaret, you want to be our You want to be our Moor? All right? Michael, you want to uh what what animal would you like to pick? You want to you want to coca? All right? There we go. Yeah, that and

that's it. That's more like it. There we go. Alright, So we're gonna get started here. Remember you're playing for a big prize. Whoever wins, we'll get a handwritten note from us to your mom or your boss or someone else who is important to you, uh, singing your praises. So there's a lot on the line here. Okay, guys. Question number one, I don't forget your noises, and when we hear your noise, we will call on you and

you'll have a chance to answer. While this dinosaur had over eight hundred teeth, it's more notable for the three horns protruding from its face. I believe that was Michael with the cauca. Alright, what's the answer? Michael? Well done? I love how you emphasize the rat there, so alright. Question number two? You ready to move, Margaret? I think this one might be yours. This is a good one.

Elvis Presley was a practitioner of this martial art, and in fact, in nineteen alright, hold on, I'll finish the question, he shot a documentary called The New Gladiator, hoping it would propel it into the mainstream. What do you think, Michael Karate? Well done? All right? Answer answer? You're you're still not in a calendar, Michael? All right? Here we go. Number three. The b Boys and Markey Mark and the Funky Bunch both had a hit song with this rat word in its title? Was that a move I heard?

What do you think? Michael? Vibrations? That's absolutely right. Okay, here we go. Alright, I'm going to skip to another one here. All right, it's okay, This is okay. This Sasha Baron Cohen character is known for being the sixth There we go. What do you say, Margaret? Y are well done? Alright? One more question here, question number five. Lisa and Bart are obsessed with this violent Tom and Jerry rip off on the Simpsons. Was that a sound? Okay?

Here we go, go for it. Show well done? Alright, alright, man goes. So what's our final tally here? So we've got Michael in first place with three points and Margaret in second place with two points. Michael, our letter do your mom will be in the mail shortly, and because we don't want anyone's mailbox to feel too lonely, Margaret, we're gonna send you a potato from Potato Parcel, the world's premier site for sending a potato through the postal service.

Thank you both for playing. So One thing I found surprising was just how new rat studies are. In fact, I was actually thrown off by how new rats are to the United States. Like historically they're documented in Southeast Asia, then they move up to China, they invade Siberia and they march into Russia and then they sneak onto ships and move across the water with people. But and this is hard to fathom, rats didn't even arrive in places

like Spain until eighteen hundred. That is pretty crazy. I mean, you imagine rats have just always been around and part of the cultural fabric. But it's true they only invaded states like Montana and the nineties or yeah. And and just to drive that point home, you know, j Otto Been the dudes who studied birds. Of course, he also

studied rats and did rat paintings. And according to Sullivan, when oddo Been showed his paintings to members of Congress and we're talking about the early eighteen hundreds here, a number of them mistook the rats for squirrels. Like these were educated men, many who worked farms, and they couldn't tell the rats from squirrel. It can be tough sometimes you have to admit that. I mean, it's a little odd,

but but you're right. The government only started studying the animals during World War two, back when we thought the Nazis might harness rodents to spread disease all across Europe. In fact, people who wanted to study rats before, they had to do it on the sly. So take Elmer McCollum, for instance. He was one of the pioneers at Johns Hopkins in the early nineteen hundreds, but he started his

research with rats at the University of Wisconsin. But the thing is he had to do it in secret because and I'm quoting, the Wisconsin state legislature would not support public expenditures on room and board of rats. A pest to the Wisconsin I guess they paid tuition. I don't know, but I thought it was a weird. That's so weird. But what we've learned about rats in the last seventy years is incredible, and it's basically that they're little geniuses.

Like they followed us across continents. They have this extraordinary sense of smell their home bodies, like they really don't travel more than sixty from their nest unless they have to, in which they can travel great distances and tread water for like three days at a time. They can be dropped from heights of fifty feet without injuring themselves. I mean that's five stories off the ground. And they're really adaptable.

Like if rats have been born in an alley that serves Indian food, they'll have a preference for samosas and curries and spicy foods. And they don't even eat that much food, only like three to four ounces a day. That's pretty adaptable. They're also super cooperative, like in one study from two thousand, twelve rats were offered a chocolate chip treat or the opportunity to free a fellow rat, and over and over they freed the rat first, and

then they shared the treat. And in studies where two rats had to press their own buttons at the same time to release treats, they quickly learned to cooperate. And this was the craziest to me. They're really sensitive, kind of like humans. Like if one of them get stressed, they bring that energy back to the nest and all of the rats get stressed. That's so sweet. The other thing I was reading about was just how suspicious they are of anything new, which of course is why pest

control is so hard. Right, So we've established they're really reproductive unless they're sporting polyester, and they're really smart, but why haven't humans figured out a way to keep them in check? Yeah? Well, one of the funny things that keeps coming up in history is that we kind of keep forgetting about rats until we're actually confronted with them again. So it's kind of an out of sight, out of mind thing. But as soon as we do see them,

we move super quickly. Right. So, in the nineteen sixties, Ebony magazine did this spread of housing projects in New York where the apartments were so dilapidated and drafty that children were under thick blankets trying to protect themselves from the cold. This wasn't at night, this was during the day, and the public was largely unmoved by the scene. But then people from the buildings started catching rats and bringing them into courts and showing the rats to the press.

That's when the public opinion shifted. So and the odd part is that this happens over and over. Like in the nineteen thirties, the New York Times had stories about the atrocious rat infestation on Rikers Island. You know, this is the prison island between Queens and the Bronx. Well, the rat problem was so bad that the guards bought a dog to control the rats. You know what the

rats did, They actually killed the dogs. So it was it was that bad, and pretty soon the officers on the island were dumping poison and discussing bringing snakes onto the island to deal with the rats. But New York totally ignored the situation until the rats swam from the island to this super exclusive summer community on Long Island Sound. And you know, when these ultra rich beach goers saw rats on their beach, they weren't having it. Yeah, that

makes sense, but let's get zen for a second. This is actually one of the themes that keeps coming up in Sullivan's book, and it's that exterminators have the cisphius like task. They're given this enormous job of trying to control the rodent population, but as soon as they stop seeing rats, their budgets get cut, so no one wants

to admit they exist. And it's crazy because, like past, controllers will work at five star hotels, and when they do that, they have to work in disguise, or when they introduce themselves at parties are on the first date, they kind of have to tread carefully, and so you you kind of come away feeling sorry for them, but also with this tremendous sense of respect. Like the best exterminators. They actually work as rats ares, and they're essentially archaeologists. Archaeologists,

What what do you mean by that? Like, the rats won't travel far from home, but they will travel deep. So a good exterminator actually sees those city and layers. They study old maps, and so in New York, for instance, a real student will decipher that a new sewer system is built on top of a system from the eighteen hundreds, and that might be built on one from the seventeen hundreds, and that might be over where a stream used to be.

And while those places aren't really functional or even accessible to humans anymore, there's no doubt that there's a rat population that's made a home for themselves there, and as long as they can still get to a food source. Well. The other thing I think that's kind of fascinating is how you were telling me that Sullivan almost compares catching

rats to think you said, fly fishing. Yeah, Like you kind of have to know the rhythm of the rat population and where they're flowing, and except that it's going to take a while, and you've got to go in with this mentality that the rats are going to come to you. I guess I've never thought about rats being so zen. Thank you now for another dramatic reading from Squeaky Poems, Rhymes about My Rat by America's foremost rat poet,

Jack Handy. What more is a man need than a Scotch and a rat and maybe a gun to rest in his lap. So our guest today is one of our favorite people in the world, right mango. Yeah, definitely

top forty. Oh, easily top forty. So for the past several years he's thrown himself into these crazy experiments and written about them, whether it was reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z, living an entire year according to the laws of the Old Testament, working to bring his body to peak help through diet and exercise, or working to build the world's largest family reunion. He's always

ready to dive in. Oh and he's a distant relative of Michael Jackson, which he can tell us about A. J. Jacobs. Welcome to part time genius. Thank you guys, happy to be here. You're in my top forty two. Thank you. This is so flattering. That's that's really what we were fishing for there, to be honest with you. So wow. So A j It's it's hard to believe it's been over a decade since he wrote no it all. I read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover. But

I'm assuming you've managed to retain it all pretty much everything. Yeah, and maybe one or two facts in the eight those were earlier. No, unfortunately I've forgotten. I play a good ninety nine point eight percent still is better than, you know, better than when I started, so ver minus. Did did you actually sit down and read every single entry, every

single page of Encyclopedia Britannica. I did. I did. I started at A A A K, which is a type of Korean music, as I'm sure you know, and then I ended A D D Y W I E C. So I read and that's the town in Poland right again, not not too sure. So yes, I read the whole thing. And I did it because my dad, when I was

a kid, he started to read the encyclopedia. He loved learning, he loved read inc. But he only made it's the middle of the beach like Bolivia or so uh, And I figured, you know, why not try to finish what he began and removed that black mark from our family history. I like that you were worried about spoiling the reading of the Encyclopedia Britannica. So is there anybody would even know where to find a printed At this point, I know it's true. I fell my kids and I'm like,

why are you talking about that mysterious encyclopedia? So a J. One of the things I love reading in your books is these stories of your wife's spinusmen and also her beleaguered responses to things. And I was curious both what project has been like the most difficult on your family and if you've abandoned anything because it's been too hard. As you know, the one about following all the rules of the Bible as literally as possible, so I had to. The Bible says no shaving, so I had this huge beard.

She didn't love that. She did not kiss me for literally seven months. There was no physical contact. UM. I don't know if this is appropriate to UH to your show, but I'll just throw it out there. And but the Bible says in Levinicus that you cannot touch women during their time of months. And if you take it the Bible really literally, you cannot sit in a seat where UH a woman, a menstruating woman has that because the seat becomes impure. And my wife found that offensive, so

she sat and everything apartment. I also love that you actually stoned someone right as I did. So I was in sort of the middle of the year. I was getting very into it, so following everything and I looked biblical. So I had the beard and a white robe and sandals, and I was in Central Park in New York where and a man came up to me and said, why are you addressed like that? And I explained, well, I'm trying to follow all the rules of the Bibles that

from the ten Commanders to sony adulters. He says, well, I'm an adulterer. Are you going to stone rate? And I said, well, that would be fantastic. So in recent years you've been obsessed with genealogy and proving that we're all related, and you even have a terrific podcast, one of our favorites called Twice Removed where you focused on this. It would have been some of the more interesting findings

from this obsession of yours. Yeah, this started because I got the strange email from this guy who said, you don't know me, but I'm your eighth cousin, and I thought he was gonna, you know, ask, here's my bank account in Nigeria, please lire ten thousand dollars. But it turns out he's just part of this group that are building these massive family trees that are trying to connect everyone in the world, and the biggest one is literally now a hundred twenty million people all connected. So I

found out this is exciting. As a I am Barack Obama's relatives. He is my fifth grade aunt's husband's brother's wife, seventh grade nephew, so we are very close brothers. What's up next for you? A j What are you? What

are you thinking about? Now? I am Actually I've got another book that I'm doing with Ted Books, and I'm gonna take something normal, uh, something I use every day, a cup of coffee, uh, and then I'm gonna go around the world and try to thank everyone involved in making that cup of coffee a reality, so the beans and I hope, so, I hope. So I don't know,

we'll see it is uh, So I have to do that. Well, since you've been, uh, the subject of so many studies, we thought it was only appropriate for you to join us in this episode to answer some questions about rats. So are you up for this high stakes quiz? A J? I am? I love rath alright, So what quiz are we playing with A J? Today? We're playing a game called Fancy Rats. And the good news for AJ is it's a true false quiz. Right, Okay, here we go. I think we have five questions for you, a J.

The first one true or false. The fannie pack was originally invented by a rat fancier who often used the pounds to sneak his lucky rat, Theodore into bowling alleys with him. Is this true or false? Oh? Man, I love it. I wanted to be true very much. And I actually was at some party recently and like the funkiest person there was wearing a fanny pack. So I'm I'm hoping that we're seeing a resurgence the santy packs. The HTR crap. I'm going to say that is weird

enough that it's got to be true. Oh, I wanted to be alright. The second question, that's right? All right? For one second question, true or false? Before he transitioned to being a mouse and two thousand twelve, Chuck from Chuck E Cheese was formerly a rat, an unusual mascot for a children's arcade slash pizza parlor. What do you think true or faults? Oh that's a good one. Oh that's a good one. In I feel like I got to go through again because you wouldn't do you wouldn't

do two falses in a row, and really tricky. You guys are really tricky. Alright, you're right, true, I'm gonna true even born a cigar chomping New Jersey rat and initially went by the name Rick Rick the rat. Alright, good job you are. You are one out of two number three true or faults. In two thousand sixteen, researchers discovered something that rat fanciers have long known that rats laugh when tickled. I feel all I read that somewhere

not in the encyclopedia, So I'm gonna say, yeah, you're right. Yeah, they giggle and ultrasonic volume that's too high pitched fris to hear. Good job, all right, Number four true or faults and fancy rat circles. The critter or pet that changed your mind about rats is called a heart rat um.

And I do know this is the one of one of the few facts I remember about raps is that they do get bad tr because I think a couple of years ago, didn't they find that it was probably Gerbils who spread the black plague and that so go onto something here a little that was my heart rap. I'm gonna say true, Yeah, it's true, and uh, it's odd because that phrase doesn't work for everything, like no one talks about their heart. Bruce Willis, Look he's talking,

is my Yeah, I think that's mine too. Actually, So you're on a roll here, a J. So with let's see if we can finish strong question number five. Angelina Jolie once had a pet rat named Harry, but gave it up when it started chewing through too many of her curtains. Well, I feel I used to work of entertainment weekly and I feel I did a lot. Like she had a vial of Philly Bob Thornton's blood. So I don't know. I mean, maybe it's like, maybe it's

a vicious rumor, but I feel I've heard that. So I'm gonna say true, true tries, which is our endless admiration at the top thirty or so I think at this point. So well, A J. We can't wait to check out your your next book, and of course everybody should check out your podcast. Twice removed, but thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you, guys. I'm huge fans. I'm so excited you're doing this podcast and honored to be a part of and and ruin it by talking

about wife's rats nine situation. All right, so let's bring this all home. Is their hope for humans in this war with rats? So it seems like there are only a few solutions because rats have been resistant to poisons and they're really just so clever and one is and this isn't happening anytime soon. But we could all turn vegan because rats are not fans of raw vegetables. Yeah,

I'd say that's not happening anytime soon. Where we can make a move to things like metal garbage cans, because it all comes down to basically starving out the rats and protecting our garbage, or by abandoning a place and having them try to live without us, or what's what's the other option? Well, this is kind of the best hope, and that's birth control. You're saying, put them on the pill? Yeah, Like, since the polyester pants, things seems like a stretch. This

might be the best option. And there's this new e p A approved birth control for rats. It's been made super sweet and really fat rich because rats have even more of a sweet tooth than us. And it basically spurs mouse a pause I know, which is the cut ci term scientists used for rat menopause. But it triggers it super early so that the populations can't breed. Poor

rats have hot flashes. Well, it's better than having them in your cupboards, right, But that's the great hope for now and how we'll finally win this battle against the grossest of foes. Um. And actually there's one more school of thought on this, and that is to do nothing. Wait, that makes no sense. We were just going through hy Rats are winning this war. Why would we ignore them? Well, the thought is because rats are super sensitive. When we kill a rat, it's peers tend to feel the danger

and start varying from their norm. And when that happens, they ran into other rats and scrape it up. And that's really where pathogens cross and diseases spread and mutap. So if you can get their rat, he needs to stay to themselves and sort of curb the diseases that's kind of what scientists think might be the best you can ask for. Anyway, if you're interested in the subject, you should definitely read Robert Sullivan's Rats, which formed the

backbone of this episode. M All right, you know what time it is, Mango, time for the fact off you bet it is as to the part of the show where we get to use the fascinating things we learned in our research for this episode but didn't get a chance to mention. And I kind of have a feeling Mango intentionally held back a few just for this big moment, So why don't you go first, Mango? So this one

is totally gross. Back in the eighteen fifties, gamblers in New York City used to crowd into halls to watch and bet on the sport called ratting. Ratting. Yeah, Like basically, a guy would show up with a big, misshapen sack full of rats, and when the ref said go, he let all of the animals just spill out, and then they let a dog go after them, and people would bet on how many rats trained dog could kill in

a short period of time. So you got to imagine this scene, right, people are betting and yelling in this terrier, because terriers are just the best at this. This terrier is going crazy while rats are running around, and it's horrible and super popular and bloody. But discuss I know, but that's not even the weird part, right. Ratting was considered a man's sport because it was so vicious, like a single dog could kill a hundred rats in six

minutes or something. But to expand the audience and make it more palatable for women and children, they had organized the same thing in the afternoons, but they'd replaced the dog with a weasel. Oh of course, right, because that's not gross at all. I know. They honestly thought watching a weasel kill a bag of rats was more appropriate for kids or something. But anyway, that that was America's favorite spectator sport until baseball took over. Okay, that's that's

a gross way to start this one. Gets a good job on this one, all right. So all this talk of rats, maybe want to go to a place where there are no rats, And it turns out that's what Alberta, Canada is all about, and act, if we're being honest, it might be the number one reason to go to Alberta. Alberta is huge. It's actually bigger than France or any

country in the EU. But it's so committed to the rat free bit that they've dedicated a rat patrol monitoring the borders for rats, and anytime there's an infestation, they bring in heavy machinery and dig out the entire nest to eradicate it. So in big years they'll find maybe two or three infestations across the region, but most years they're not any that's kind of crazy. Uh So this is a super simple one, but it makes me happy. Did you know that male rats are called bucks and

females are called does? I did not know? I know. And the best part of it is that you can sing the sound of music song with new lyrics like dough or rats. I get the idea. That's a good one. That's a good one. All right. Rats are subject to peer pressure. If they see a bunch of their friend rats eating something on appetizing, they'll join into rapper tupac. Shakur studied ballet in high school and started the nutcracker as the mouse bringing some tupac. Well done, you get

a extra point for that one, alright. Fancy rat owners practice something called road dentistry. You're not gonna believe this one. So where they'll open up their mouths and let a rat nibble and pick food from their teeth, they're basically outsourcing the job of flossing to their pets. That's crazy. You have to YouTube this. I'm not I'm not kidding. It so gross. The owners will just lean back and

the rats get really deep in their mouths. It's because rats have a grooming behavior where they'll clean each other's teeth, and rat parents basically consider it the ultimate compliments. So you have to YouTube it. Um well, I cannot top that, So you win this week's fact Off. Thank you to our listeners out there. Please send in your suggestions for rebranding the Rat and we'll make sure you get a

fun prize out of it. And you know, well, there's one last part of the show that we need to deal with, the Part Time Genius Awards, And today I'd like to nominate the author of the best book I read last year, The Stench of Honolulu, of course, and also America's pre eminent rat poet. That's right, Mr Jack Handy. You'll be added to our Hall of Genius and we'll be mailing you a certificate to hang on your fridge.

Congratulations Jack Handy. And in honor of Jack Handy, why don't we read one last poem from America's greatest rap poot to close the show. I think that's a fine idea. The Middle Ages were the best of times to be a rat. You could point to a man with plague and say I gave him that. Thank you. Until next time, we're Will and Mango for Part Time Genius. Thanks again

for listening to Part Time Genius. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast, and because we're a brand new show, if you're feeling extra generous, we'd love it if you give us a rating on Apple Podcast. Part Time Genius is produced by some of our favorite geniuses. It's edited by Tristan McNeil, theme song and audio mixing by Noel Brown. Our executive producer is Jerry Rowland. Our res arch team is Gabe Bluesier, Lucas Adams, Autom white

Field Me Toronto, Austin Thompson and Meg Robbins. Jason Hoke is are chief cheerleader.