to really see the world as he's never seen it before, the drive, no dw documentary cost about why does that most of think it's like now i'm leave them under the new host. join us for an exciting exploration and everything in between. this is a video and audio production 5 d, w. i hope video will tune in the the

new world a weeks as the sun sets over big cities. the world of rach a world that a shadow humans for eod, rats of the stuff of horror stories and urban minutes, often boating our disgust and fears. they're seen as dirty, aggressive and devious carriers of deadly diseases. and they're everywhere. many feel like they already know more about this animal than they want to. but what do we really know about our unpopular neighbors? the large scale research projects around the world are looking at the be

a view of rats in big cities. and one of the 1st was a model project launched in vancouver, the canadian red capital that allegedly boasts the highest rank population. chelsea who's worth a pioneer of modern rank research, set out in 2010 to answer some basic questions. what are the things that interest me when i started the vancouver wrap project is how little we know about rats. and i really wonder why that was the case. why these animals that live amongst us since the dawn of civilization, we understand so little. and i think the 1st is that they're a little distasteful or maybe not as glamorous as, as some of the other animals that scientists could choose to study. so if you have the option to choose between a rat or gorilla, you might not choose the rach, i think the 2nd is, is exactly this issue of co existence that we've lived with them for so long. we

think, oh, we maybe we know everything there is to know about them. and i think the final thing is our, our attitude toward the science of rats and rap management that previously had been considered really a blue color occupation. something you just get rid of. and only now are we recognizing yes, rats or an animal, a wildlife population, just like polar bears just like sam. and so we really were wanting to understand the basics. where to wrap populations look like in modern cities, how many rats are there in each block? how do they behave, and more importantly, what diseases do they carry? the goal is a future where humans can coexist with rats, with his few health risks and fears as possible. that means questioning, previous belief is and taking

a complex approach to the question of living with the rodents. the scientists with the armageddon project have already begun to expose the secret lives of powers as rach. welcome to centurylink. this is a very small young wrapped up in the seats. what's known as a brown wrap to fix it. scientific name is rach us, nor vega course, and it's the right most commonly found in european cities and in paris. specifically, this one is perhaps 2 weeks old. she's just starting to venture out of her bureau mazda. she'll kill, this won't tell you. oh, so like a real, ha, uh, don't group. i'm little true that this rat, one of the common rat, also known as a sewer rap is quite typical in urban environments with the you not the was that causes conflicts because it's usually considered dangerous. and dirty girl fits it

on my key questions that i commit on and about going through a lot of people there is no denying that it can post health risk who didn't have room on. but it's also an animal that co exist is with us. and then the roof was, it is done and you've been told there's increased interest in it too much. and even a growing goodwill towards this little animal, not a while ago, the present to jump video is of the, to the ship to tell you about, keep you. that'd be cool. as 12 months to push on that you drove off the phone or the keystone. but as the community for me, the armageddon project is an attempted answering. fundamental biological questions that have alluded us to push it. it's a 1st for paris or even for france in general. there's never been a research project that has some studies, rats in the city or paris in particular on film. another important topic is health . just seeing how high is the risk of rats transmitting diseases in paris here too . we have no information, no data, no, no idea, really the ill found

a pleasant suzuki, formal sheets. and finally, the 3rd topic, which i also think is very important, is understanding why some people hate radcliffe, and others loved them. and how to better approach these differing rad opinions and images. it is the most difficult. uh, do you have the . ringback ringback the york in northern england was a key part of the roman empire. and sewell archaeologist david norton, is using 1000 year old bones to investigate what rats can tell us about human

history. the speakers where there has been people they have always been rach who have always liked the idea of using small and unlikely remains to tell kind of big picture stories about human history. tiny wrapped things made needs to be sent to meet has not been connecting them from lots of different places and getting together a story of what they can tell us about connectivity between different human supplements connected to the supplements. and so basically it's tracing when, when they were understanding the presence is behind that using those processes to understand here the end of the roman empire and the development of medieval trade, the human side. and then trying to understand how much of the role they could if

they didn't take the. 2 researches in hills and key are also studying the complexity of human rac relations . scientists want to develop a good rep management system for the finish capital. enter leave for use of the city use rach. wild threats are often seen us harmful on, on useful. but then again, we have pet rents and laboratory rats. so racks are they have multitude of meanings in human cultures to the present day relationship between you mentioned rocks is, is quite heated and, and it's always important to look at history and look at the past relationship in order to understand why we have present day conflicts and discussions hope sometimes people compare rats to humans and. 2 say that right uh quite similar to

us the. 2 the, the, using the project is laid by to almost a below even though the cities rad problem is small, in comparison to other cities. either those team is ambitious and is taking an unconventional approach. when you look at the human evolution, kind of like the stories that that's what, whatever is the situation human able to add up to a mutual standpoint. and the address i see very much of a similar situation. so the way this thing with the rest is that how well they can take each situation and thrive. you and then the rest and laboratory risks to which i've been study 450. yes. for different good bike bio medical uses. a lot of the kind of like medical advances that we have because your human lifespan has us as

long as we get to the time of the kind of like medium. so for us to kind of like sacrifice their lives for the funds, the so we know that the rest on the scale, everything new but these look like the features, new for become scared of everything you but they quite quickly learn what the status and what it does come like it makes it easier on somebody and human environment. so going to like it's more difficult to say it is due to the rules of such and such. all right. but makes it very interesting from kind of like in order for the plan, which is quite a few the

understanding. yeah. lots of different unemotional learning around. for example, on the truck place up the we had mice truck. so going to buy balancing me last direct trucks, but they also the smaller the bins and again on here you can see on these truck lives we have red trucks. so we know the address, i'm moving around here and there is maybe one will fit those inside the stone wall here. so they're running from the here and then moving around the car caught an issue. so then we're setting up to come over here to see where that can work to make sure that the so it's a rough on whether it's the individual right. whole civil rights are very social animals. they bring food to the nations of weak family members. efforts to create a basis for genetic analysis to see if the animals are related in the additional language and switch huffman on that so connected to them. and then we have very little of prior knowledge about wild routes of minded for scott. it's kind the

most s s last. if those of condemning, let's go ahead and do much pressing. now for offline we had to meet the strict requirements for approval as an animal experiment. and it took us a long time to find the right trap. it had to be animal c, which is a very small market recruiter. today we're placing and beating the traps and so that the animals can get used to them often. once the traps have been accepted, we trigger them and then we'll catch some grabs for genetic testing. we met, we used thermal imaging, cameras and wildlife cameras to select the to best message for above ground and underground with i. c 5 s mutual and i was given. 2 the, the vancouver researchers have already reached some surprising conclusions. in the

most problematic district where apartment blocks are built on a grid, rats move within clearly defined territories that has some interesting consequences . 1 the 1st phase was sort of a fax finding mission about what the health risk or that routes, how it was in hoover's downtown east side. so really understanding where are the routes and what diseases they carry. 2 we caught 700 rats and identified something like 1200 related relationships. so parents off spring full siblings, have siblings of all of those relationships. there was only about one percent of them that were in different city blocks. and that was quite surprising to see how little they move between blocks and of routes. don't move between those blocks. they don't spread their diseases with them. so what we found using left us for

rosa's, as an example, was that disease is found in some blocks. and not others because those blocks are really reflective of family groups. they're reflective of transmission being with in families and that in different blocks you have different families that just don't come into contact with each other. and roads. interestingly enough, also sort of mark the territory for these families. this is my block. you stay in your block, and there's very little contact between the raf families. if we know that rats don't move much among city blocks, you know that your neighborhood rat really is your neighborhood, right? and you can target your management approaches to the scale of the city block the, the, the, the don't, can you, we often use this method with rodents and our research of it to yeah,

we attach an ear tag with a number. she don't want y'all said little mention, it's like an id card. it will say because we can then find them again. i'll screw up the real how we release them. and thanks to this tag, we know exactly who is moving to where, when, and how with the help of all the traps we put up gone. they killed all summer they've just put on. there really isn't technique to say it's a very precise technique for finding out how many animals are in a particular place. yeah. and then you more on, on the other researchers in your god trying to discover how long rats have been adapted to humans. black rats commonly known as house rats are the focus human trade, urban ization, and large and tires helped spread them around the world. but they are now considered extinct in many parts of europe. we know that the black track spread

across the room and, and so by around the 1st century, dc, 1st century a to there's good reason to think it was present in the mediterranean for quite a long time before that. but right now, we really don't know when the says kind of concentration of evidence that, that threats turning up in archaeological human settlements comes from the end as probably civilization, and from that they may have strep beyond the region. so around the same time we start to see black rats arriving in mesopotamia settlements. it's another arrangement around the same time. we're starting to see cities develop on those quite a bit of trait documented between those regions. and i find this quite fascinating because wraps, spread around the world by human trait connections. and they're also dependent on the kind of settlements we have your pacific city and the roman period. it became

less important, the smaller, less well connected. and then it became the biggest city again into the viking age . and you can see wraps mirror and what i think is happening here with this kind of rise and full and then rise again front populations. is it that tracking nature of the human, this economic system, the brown ro, is generally sort of spread across here in the 18 cent right. for those there are some suggestions that might have been present, perhaps in the 15. so 16 century. but the majority view based must be on documentary records is that it's bad in the 18th century. one of the main things that people will think about if you say wraps in history or perhaps in ok, elegy is the idea that wraps with the main need to blame for the spread of taking the task, particularly in the black death. this often comes across as a very polarized to date. you'll see news headlines saying it wasn't wraps up through the wraps. and there are also many historians who follow the traditional

line. many epidemiologists are interested in history for that matter. who is a push back against that and a very keen on the traditional views. so it's often seemed to be this kind of heated debate. either it was all about rach, everywhere or alternative the it shouldn't really be about wraps. it will, it was something different. but i think the real question of away from the headlines, the real question is how much of a factor was the presence of wraps in the way that historically, kinetics developed. if you took the rats away, which we still have had a panoramic on the scale. if the black death, i suspect wouldn't destiny. but that's something which is still very much bye to when it comes to human risks associated with rats. there were a couple of really interesting things that we found. one is not all ras, terry disease. and actually,

the number of rats isn't proportional to the disease risk. so we found some huge colonies of rats that were totally clean. didn't have any of these bacteria and viruses and other smaller colonies that were just loaded. so that was really important because our public health principles are based on the assumption that then if there is more rights, there must be more disease. but that's not true at all. the association between rats and disease is much more complex than that. and then if you do come into contact with a rat, yes, i think the answer is they absolutely have the potential to pass at different bacteria and viruses that make people sick. but the risk for different people is not equal. in some parts of the world, people are more exposed to rats and more exposed to disease carrying rats. we know

that these diseases are more common in countries that are less developed, but then even with in a city. and this was really interesting, different populations or neighborhoods are more at risk. so we were really focused on the downtown east side, which is called vancouver's porous postal code. and that's because it has this confluence of factors. it has dilapidated buildings in adequate infrastructure and sanitation, all of which can attract rats. and then you've got people that are adequately house . they're on the street. they might be using drugs, they might be doing sex work. and so they have lots of opportunity to comment contact with wraps and layer on top of that, that a lot of these individuals have other infections, like h, i, v, aids, hepatitis that decrease their immune system and make them more vulnerable. so when

you take all these factors together, you do certainly have certain populations in a city that will be more vulnerable to rats than others. most used as part of the arm to get in. and thanks to our apartment, the pastor institute before we do have a kind of inventory of the pathogens that paris rats can transmit. and then we know, for example, that was done preparation, wraps, and kerry left us derosa associate. but we don't really know whether it poses any danger to humans or how high the risk of infection is to. it's the or radically possible that rats transmit disease. and although in paris, we don't yet know if that's the case and there is no risk for the average parisian going about their everyday life. totally balmy's the most of you trust

what else we found were that rats also carried a lot of human bacteria and viruses. so they act almost like little sponge in the when we think about the rich, the only easiest which leaving the sweet system. and if you kind of like this discipline and you're going to expose this even pathogens sewage system is pretty cool. so i think when we think about kind of like publish and spread the probably minimal puppets and spread from wraps, the humans broke only a huge amount of but doesn't break from humans to read. i like these to these come but the wrong diety, l. c. you must be the one who gets all the disease from atlanta most. it's very most of the way wrong because it's a, it's a humans word. and we spreads about the turns around the rest of this book. because i believe you all the cycle of,

of perhaps getting disease from humans. sometimes humans continue from right. so, so that's a bit of a price that the routes have to pay when they are so close to us. 6 i am especially looking at food feeding in helsinki city because nowadays in present day had sinking. the feeding is really up the heart of the wrecked conflict. food feeding is really, really important in finland. it's something that has been done from the 19th century on which people it has engaged. many people want to feed, but it's bought. city officials have forbidden it in many places. and this can cause a debates and heated discussions between neighbors because both feeding is seen or something that can benefit around birds being fed is a problem everywhere. it attracts rats. and once they show up counter measures are

never far behind. but scientific research into the long term effects of rec, control has been lacking. it's unclear if it actually reduces any health risk. the no one's actually done the studies to see if trapping and killing rats reduces disease risk. so we actually, we did that experiment. so we looked again taking this bacteria left to spiral, which we already knew kind of how it worked. and we measured how many rats had left to spiral before our study. and then we went in there and we simulated a pest control intervention. we then trapped and said ok to these rats that are, are remaining, did they still have disease? and they did. but what was more amazing is they had more disease then the rats

before we did the trapping. so the pest control intervention, which was supposed to reduce our disease risk counter intuitively increased the amount of disease in this right population. so why might we see an increase that's the opposite of what we would hope to see, right? we would hope that you might remove routes and the risk would go down. but what we came to understand is that when you remove these individuals, you might change how they interact with each other. so social dynamics, if you remove some wraps, maybe that changes how they fight and bite and try to get food resources. and when you spread a bacteria among wraps through fighting and fighting, well, if you change those dynamics, you change how that spread that really taught us that. so the, the current war on rats to get rid of as many routes as possible may be

causing the problem that it's trying to prevent. i think the answer is changing the way we see the problem. the i love way too much is visit the of all, i'll make you don't. i admit that before working on the armageddon project, i just, i was one of those people who had a lot of prejudice against rad z. i would even say that i basically had a phobia who's a deep fear and dissipated for rats. but as i have learned more about their nature, i've learned whatever remarkable animal they are, who it's been a journey of self discovery through my encounters with rags to the whole curriculum up. that was about the see what i'm or system and to do this. that's how this is

perfect. it's a great specimen of rad, just nerve huge because it's also called brown, right. and lives in the city for several round is the typical color. although there are individuals with very dark or very light for you, but this one is really a classic example. this is the wrap. we all know the street rack and the city 60, this individual is an adult. it broke off at the body is another easily recognizable feature, the length of the body longer than the tail. quote, what we have here is a beautiful adult female rad as nerve each because skill set us in best. and then i do have additional radiators. and then the computer is just, you know, the most in the home can, even as a biologist am, i have to admit that i knew very little about this animal. and that i had many, subconscious, unfounded, least about the rad rumors, police were maybe even childhood memories. that's my mother has eroded phobia, who and, and then i was one of those people who were afraid of raps because without really knowing why serial jewel failed, you hear me so,

okay. and most of the, this old views, surprisingly wide spread in the collective consciousness of western societies even seems to be a common denominator of western culture. regularly stirred up by the media and pass down from one generation to the next. rats are seen as harbingers of june and a universal symbol of danger and just toby, a new job due to the 1st and the day. so it was just jeopardy. huh. the media always plays a role in shaping ideas and it's no different with wraps on the table. it's interesting that they function both as witnesses and producers of social ideas. the mutual during the siege of paris early 1870 parents was some circled by the prussian army and completely cut off from the supply of good. send you to a pony. janelle would you. the parisians began to eat meat from animals. they had

never eaten before. most of including route because any law say to to mostly by just get all of these on pulse formulas on the rep market was even set up and yet they are so crazy and could continue to eat. need to put, could he buys up to school to the level this really left its mark on the french can install this. this moment was when the rep was transformed in turns to meet on people's plates. beyond actually the us, it, the information newspapers of there are mentions on force that dates back to the late 19th century, oftentimes which by c t o officials and there were many wrecked force of the sofa in order to get rid of wraps from here. the sink and people were encouraged to

do have a war on rats or to try to get rid of threats, for instance, even magazines, for their seas. so there were lots of this kind of almost per book on the image cheese that people could see the know see, this is the left. this was on the nice spectacle was imported from great britain in the 18 seventy's rap. beating up were dogs and rats were placed in an arena. the rattle drove the shuffle to his st. paul, i think you know how the dogs were trained to attack and mass, a creepy and trained wrap. this will get a slice, a wraps have separate a historic tradition of cruelty to the new stuff the. 2 the

new media, what do, let's do, one of which is this via either the original motivation for our project was to learn more about the environmental risk using rodents, toys and stuff. i'm anti coagulant and have generally been used. you have to kill rafa speaking. but since these are blood clotting inhibitors, which have the advantage that they have a slightly delayed effect, so they ride some just enough poison, you are 5 at the same time, the substances are persist in that one value a, cumulative and toxic, and which means that they accumulate in the environment on end are toxic to other living organisms in industry. and in recent years, we've been shocked to learn that the act of substances from wrapped poisons. we can already be found in many other wild animals that look like fish for kansas. our and what's really shocking is that 100 percent of the fish caught in rivers and the predators that eat these fish, one more also contaminated. for example,

for aquatic life, the main source of pollution is to sewage system. find the optic waste water is not cleans to remove anticoagulants from the water. these trace substances are so small that they can still be found and the treating wastewater offers of kansas city, south carolina to banish board stuff. or there's a study where a car placed in ponds where purified wastewater from sewage treatment plants was discharged. and 80 percent of the liver samples contained at least one act of substance from wrapped points. and then the pool meant to you, munitions. i'm book stuff austin, happening, gifting stuff was, i've shockey and, and i'm just shocking of them. but 5, we have to ask ourselves, how can we reduce this environmental impact to convince him, how can we prevent these toxins from accumulating further than the human. some of our tests, so alarming results to other animals reacts to the poison in the same way as rats do. they die from internal bleeding. yeah, something has to be done,

but off in vancouver and in b. c as a whole, there's very much a move, a cultural move to go away from chemical means of controlling rats because of the negative impacts on other wildlife. so we certainly don't want to have, you know, beautiful apples falling from the sky, dying of rat poison. of course i'll make you go back to you. nicky perch cause i choose to choose one team from the armageddon project is looking into the use over dentist sides like the rep points and they found that certain wrap populations have developed a tolerance to which means that the use of police ends up on might have lethal effects on others, be caesar while having no effect on some rags on the footprint of these thoughts. and if you don't leave message are ultimately of no use in trying to stop me. the threat of rats who need me to the police of the all this culture and i call it this

sort of enters bc's genocide. really it's, it's one species trying to wipe out another species. and i think that's it's, it's not good science and i think it's not good culturally the bunk. it is not only the war against rach that runs through the history of mankind. the, the rack has also been used by people and countries as a symbol of their enemies in wars, just oak hatred and entertain whoever is a step country producing public and rats often come to represent the enemy, something that people want to get rid of. for instance, in,

in soviet cartoons reps where used to represent a germany and nazi germany or nazi party. also in it not to germany. a jew square represented sometimes with the images of rats. so it seems that it's, it's all open to and to be off of the nation or what is perceived to be the enemy of the nation. but the wrench images slowly improving. rats are being stuffed as part of the power as project for the permanent exhibition at the natural history museum, to return them to their place in the animal kingdom. and to bring them closer to the general public as regular animals in a few free environment. say

like c daniels on a yeah. you know, when you mash, i'm keep to told you how in with them all there's actually been a new image emerging of the rad, in recent years for joe and you with the well known animated film rattle to he was very helpful. it was the 1st time a rap surfaced from the sewers. it's moving away from the image of darkness, an evil odd between instead we got a rat that's intelligent, funny, likable. curious right, and hard working. you call that, you know, looking at the placing read to, to a, if a rat to becomes an excellent code in the kitchen, really made a difference, but ultimately helps to shift public opinion more is especially among the young didn't she didn't want in the, i think we do need a perspective change on rats. i think if we thought of them differently as sort of our urban neighbors and that we need to manage those relationships. i think that i

think that those approaches would go along way. and so i think that sort of perspective shift as routes as part of makes a big difference and how we manage them and improve the health of our cities altogether. wrap, steve, tell us quite a bit about people and they also say something about how we treat our cities, how we manage our ways. i mean, they are reflective of, in a lot of ways, our own actions or inaction, the oven, and the move in, even if the need to control rats remains. and especially in the cities, it has to eventually be done differently than by using active substances that stay in the environment from life. and if it turns out that using or dentist, site and sewers is not effective. so then the next step should be to band poisoning my vendors, but i took. 1 the

little bit to the tools, the only we do, we always release the animals where we caught them, or very close to the trap in which they were caught, the sounds of thought, but this is very important. it helps to limit the behavioral stress caused by releasing the animal somewhere else. i strongly pulled off tomorrow is because of all the shake of sun of to of the tools is just accepted. you just have to accept that they are, they're supposed to prevent them from causing problems and limit the risk of evil and otherwise try to co exist with them. if we, for example, reduce the amount of food that is constantly thrown away in our modern cities ago, we would have far fewer rats along with one of the local yano cupid fee. there is a direct link between the presence of rabble styles and for waste management, who been and poor city administration who loves you politics are never far away.

right, sir, ultimately a political issue. expanding cities, waste wills and ignorance help them spread. and since they can pose a health risk, especially to the weakest members of society or responsible approach to a healthy or co existence with rats as needed. after all rad poison contaminates the environment, forming humans as much as anything else. but what's the solution? focused so much on the wrapped itself that we don't see all the complex interconnections it has with our daily lives. for example, the relationship between rats and garbage or do we look at the impact of rats on the urban poor? so there's no point in going in and getting rid of the rats when the whole building

is falling down and filled with garbage. instead, having by laws that hold landlords accountable for environmental sanitation is going to increase the overall living conditions in those facilities. and also as a secondary consequence, get rid of the rest. so that's a solution to a wrap problem. that is a policy solution. it's a beautiful kind of like big picture of how society also works. i know that in vancouver projects website fall, the best, the homeless people who are the contact with drugs and, and then kind of like it would be probably the wrong to say that the, that's the restful halt. but the homeless people have contact with drugs. but probably kind of like social problem, if they often list people. so there's not that much homeless people in, hey listen to you, which means that that supports humble but kind of like group which would be, would be called the rats unpopular get. they're going to like make it the basic formats doesn't really exist. pretty much the only reason why rights come

a controlled in house is like on the bikes. that issue infrastructure. humans need to abandon the illusion of is imitating rach completely. it hasn't worked so far and there is no reason it will in the future. rats are part of the urban ecosystem. modern risk management needs a scientific contemporary approach. it's probably time to end the war on rach and overcome our age old fears. i wouldn't say that routes are dangerous. i think that our actions towards managing them make them more or less dangerous or not, but we have no choice but to co exist with rabbit and to help us to accept them and make it as easy as possible. we need to better understand their behavior. i'm optimistic that it's getting better the

understanding the forest to say to the people are trying to invite this ecosystem man, we sorry, again, trying to change and it's working closely . minutes on d. w targeting civilians. how russian drill terrorize

a ukrainian city. what's behind and why are russian forces doing this? our team comes across in the outrages claim and decides to investigate. close out. in 19 minutes, d w, the imagine that you're eating a hamburger. and as you're biting into this juicy burner, your dining companion says to you, actually that hamburger is not made from cows. it's made from golden retriever's. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 in meeting cultures around the world, people learn to classify small handful of animals with edible and all the rest of

the classify as disgusting. a donkey series about our complex relationship with animals and debate. watch now on youtube. d. w documentary. the, this is the, the news and these are all top stories. a crane is also a health pharmacy or a p, a native us following massive russian instruct. steve said 15 different regions were hit by russia's attack and reported several civilian casualties. president william is the landscape said miss allan drawing bombardment was one of the largest of the war that it costs heavy damage to infrastructure. germany is tron, so it will have show as says he will type in the countries weapons load and speed up the potations of rejected asylum and thank you.