Tag: RATS
New York has rats. There’s no escaping this. Sometimes they even ride the subway, which is disgusting, but a thing that has happened many, many times before. But for straphangers on Monday, an errant rodent on an A train was treated as if an otherworldly event was unfolding, like the unleashing of the Kraken. In […]
Scientists at the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health have put together an estimate of the total number of mammal viruses in the world. That number currently stands at 320,000. There are the global seed banks (currently 6 million varieties stored in 1,300 banks), the human genome, and now, viruses have begun to enter the big data […]
When office colleague Mike Aaron sauntered over to my desk this afternoon and said he had a photo of something “really, really gross” on his iPhone, I assumed it couldn’t be all that bad. After all, I’ve seen lots of nasty things during my 21-year tenure in New York City. Then he showed it to […]
Sure, New York has a rat problem. A rat plague, if you will. There are goddamn rats everywhere. But maybe taking your terriers and dachshunds out for a rat hunt in a grimy Manhattan alley isn’t the solution? The AP reports that there are these “ratter” people who get together to play fox hunt in New […]
The MTA has an inventive new solution for our subway’s ever-growing rat infestation. New York, it’s time for rat “birth control.” Or forced sterility, if you want to be blunt about it. The sterilization product ContraPest was developed by SenesTech Inc., and functions by inducing early menopause in female rats (who typically start birthing litters […]
Noting the uptick in reported rodent activity since Hurricane Sandy flushed many of the critters inland, Councilwoman Jessica Lappin is calling on the city to enact a $500,000 plan to beat back the dirty rats. “As New Yorkers, we have a certain level of tolerance for rats,” she said. “But this is a real public […]
Because rat-infested cars are apparently something you have to worry about now: according to the Brooklyn Paper, Kings County repair shops and exterminators are seeing an uptick in cars that won’t start due to rodents’ nests under the hood. A manager at Bay Ridge Lexus, for example, said he’s seen five ratmobiles so far this winter. “You could […]
You’ve already got that awesome, high-speed cardboard robot cockroach, so here’s a rodent companion for it to play around with. Beware though–this robot rat is designed with the explicit purpose of making other animals stressed, depressed, and otherwise upset. With the intent of studying how mental disorders affect lab rats, the Japanese researchers programmed this […]
After disparaging rats yesterday, it seems that vitriol was unwise. Today, science just said that humans share some anatomical qualities to a creature that was the size of a rat. We might as well just call ourselves rat people now. After six years of sifting through mammalian family trees, scientists believe that a common ancestor […]
That headline might not come as much of a surprise, since there are always goddamn rats everywhere, but right now, there are more goddamn rats than usual, and it’s all Hurricane Sandy’s fault. The floods (combined with the cold) made the rats move elsewhere and inside buildings, now they have more garbage for their enjoyment […]
