NYC's new rat weapon still no match for impending rodent takeover - Business Insider
NYC's New Rat Weapon Still No Match for Impending Rodent Takeover
But if the world continues warming, it might not get cold enough to slow rat reproduction, which means the rodents could theoretically continue reproducing more months out of the year, increasing the population overall."It's going to be an issue," Munshi-South said, "especially in northern cities like New York City. Our winters just aren't very cold, anymore."
By running his own surveys with exterminators around the city, Corrigan concluded, "there are more rats. The question we don't know is: Is it 20% more rats? Is it 36.6%? Empirically, we'll probably never get that answer," he said.
Munshi-South also witnessed this trend. "Last year, year before, I was seeing flowers in bloom in December. And you'd see rat babies, young rats, running around. In previous years, it would've been cold by then and rats would've stopped reproducing," in NYC, he told Insider.
What more rats could mean for humans
More rats could be mean more disease. Rats
In addition to whatever personal reactions you might have to an increase in the rat population, there's another serious matter at hand – the spread of disease.
In a 2020 study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, veterinarians found that rodents, including rats and mice, were responsible for 61% of diseases spread by animals.
Over a 15-year period, there had only been 57 cases of leptospirosis reported in New York, making 2021 an especially high year. A health department spokesperson told Insider that climate change was likely a factor in the outbreak.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”