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the world of rach a world that a shadow humans for e. rats of the stuff of horror stories and urban minutes. offerings voting. our disgust and fears, they are seen as dirty, aggressive and devious carriers of deadly diseases. and they are 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 behavior 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. chose the hymns where it's a pioneer of modern rac research set out in 2010 to answer some basic questions. what are the things that interest me when i started the vancouver rock 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 had the option to drat 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 rac 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 salmon. 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 co exist with rats, with as few health risks and fears as possible. that means, questioning previous believes 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 what's on on on 100. this is a very small young wrapped up in the heath, what's known as a brown wrap to fix it. scientific name is wrapped us nor vague because, and it's the right most commonly found in european cities and in paris. specifically, this one is perhaps 2 weeks old, and she's just starting to venture out of her bureau, mazda southfield. this won't tell you. oh, so i really don't goof a michel, true that this rat, one of the common rat, also known as a sewer rap is quite typical in urban environments with me. you thought it was that causes conflicts because it's usually considered dangerous and dirty girl fits it on anybody. key questions that i commit on anybody don't show that 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 they don't. the roof was, it is something you might know. there is increased interest in that they might use and even a growing goodwill towards this little animal, not a while ago, the present to jump video. so if you do this, if it does, you might keep you. that'd be cool. as 12 months to push on that you drove off the phone or the keystone by the community. from 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 care. 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 wrap, those meetings we sent to meet has now 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 settlements. 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 of a tutor attempt.

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 as harmful and, and useful. but then again, we have pet rents and laboratory rats. so rocks are, they have multitude of meanings in human cultures to the present. a 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. often times people compare rats to humans and. 2 say that right, uh,

quite similar to us the, the, using the project is laid by tool most i below even though the cities rad problem is small, in comparison to other cities, i have the lowest 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 side will do that, update mutual stand apartments and the rest 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 in laboratory roots which have been studied for 150. yes, for different. good bye bye. a medical uses a lot of the kind of like medical advances that we have,

because 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 for the scientific research the . 4 so we know that the rest on the okay, they are scared of everything new. but these look like that would be just new for me to schedule for everything year. but they quite quickly learn what is the truth and what is that does come like it makes sense. i want to get in and keep an eye appointment for going like it's more difficult to say in the room so 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 come like this, a lot of different unemotional running around for example, and the truck place up the we had mice truck. so going to buy bouncy, me last direct trucks, but they ask about us more then then again on here you can see on these truck plays, we have retros. so we know the address. i'm moving around here and there is maybe one of the rooms inside the stone wall here. so they're running from the here and then moving around the car, the car, and in here. so then we're setting up to come over here to see where that can work to make sure that this is a rough and where they say individual russell several ranch are very social animals. they bring food to the nations of weak family members. and when forced to choose between rescue and a fellow right and a piece of chocolate experiments show that rats will usually choose to help the

these cities aren't alone. a team in berlin is also interested in the parallel worlds of rach, they're working to assess the use of rat poison in the city sewers. for decades, berlin is boned ranch with ro, dentist, sides with severe consequences for the environment. 2 but no one knows of the pesticides or the right approach. and if it makes sense to guard the city with industrial amounts of rank boys and yeah, the fossils clear now started our research project, right? control and sewers because we 1st had to catch at least 60 animals from different populations around berlin to create a basis for a genetic analysis to see if the animals are related. in the addition i use in switch huffman, on that so connected to them, and then we have very little of prior knowledge about wild wraps of mine,

just kind of fun the most s s last if was a condemning last one hot and damaged personnel for offline and 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 the thermal imaging cameras and wildlife cameras to select the to best message for above ground and underground would i see 5 as me told him, i was gonna be. 2 the, the vancouver researchers have already reached some surprising conclusions. in the most problematic district were apartment blocks are built on

a great rats move within clearly defined territories that has some interesting consequences. 1 the 1st phase was sort of a fact finding mission about what the health risks are that routes, how it was in, i think 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 rats don't move between those blocks. they don't spread their diseases with them. so what we found using left those for roses, as an example with 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 within 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 rat. and you can target your management approaches to the scale of the city block. the laws don't catch you. we often use this method with rodents in our research on that to. yeah, we attach an ear tag with a number i'm,

i'm sure the only i'll say don't mention, it's like an id card. you'll see because we can then find them again. i'll screw up the real hucks, 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 call big football. they killed all summer, the objects put on that. it shouldn't take me to say is it's a very precise technique for finding out how many animals are in a particular place. yeah, the anymore on, on the order to 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 empires 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 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 search is kind of concentration of evidence that that threats turning up in archaeological human settlements comes from the end of the valley civilization. and from that they may have scrapped beyond the reach. and 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 and those quite a bit of tre, documented between those regions. and i find this quite fascinating because wraps, spread around the world by human great connections. and they're also dependent on the kind of settlements we have weighing new york is a big city and 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 rise again of rep populations. is it that tracking nature of the human that you cannot make system in the brown room is generally thoughts is spread across here in the 18th century. although there are some suggestions that might have been present perhaps in the 15th or 16th 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 were the main need to blame for the spread of plague in the past, 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, right. so it was something different. but i think the real question of away from the headlines, the real question is how much of the fact was the presence of wraps in the way that historically, kinetics developed. if you took the rats away, which we still have had upon demick 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 rats, there must be more disease. but that's not true at all. the association between wraps 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 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 for 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 the 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 come into 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. the most, you know maggie do as part of the arm to get in. and thanks to our partner, the pastor institute, the but we do have a kind of inventory of the pathogens that paris rats can transmit. and then we know, for example, that will some peroration, you add some carriers up those derosa associate, but we don't really know whether it poses any danger to humans or how high the risk of infection is going to. it's the are 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 bodies the most of us. 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 only easy switch leaving the sewage system. and if you kind of like, if there's a place you can expose this even public tons, sewage system is probably pretty, pretty much. so i think when we think about sort of like publishing spread the probably medium all pets and spread from read sticky. humans broke only a huge amount of purpose and bread for a few minutes to read. i like the says, this come by, turn around the idea of human steve, the one who gets solved, but this is these from of the animals. it's very most of the way around because it's the, it's a humans work. and we spreads about the tense around the reference book, because i believe the off the cycle of overhead, skeptical disease from human side better humans continue from brett so, so that's

a bit of a price that the rats have to pay when they are so close to us. 6 i am especially looking at food feeding in helsinki safety because nowadays in present day has thinking good 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 that, but city officials have forbidden it in many places. this can cause a debates and heated discussions between neighbors because both feeding is seen or something that can benefit to the rent. the 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 the, 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 it that 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've 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 a novelty because they couldn't of that was about say, no, see what i'm will assist you in to do this that's how this is perfect. it's

a great specimen of wrapped us nerve. huge because it's also called brown right. and lives in the city for to have a 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 route 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 sets in best. and then i do a to sylvie. and then what i'll do is just, you know, most of 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 belief about the rad. rumors, police were maybe even childhood memories, that's my mother has eroded phobia, and then i was one of those people who were afraid of raps because like, without really knowing why. so usual to build, you hear me so. okay. and most of the,

this old views, surprisingly wide spread in the collective consciousness of western societies. it 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 at the job due to the 1st and the day. so it was his deputy. huh. so 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 mural during the siege of paris early 18. 70 harris was 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 ralph does any more offered to mostly by just get out a little pull from village on. there is a rep. market was even set up and yet they are so parisians could continue to eat, need to put, could he buys up his question? yeah, mostly level this really left its mark on the french can install this. this moment was when the rep was transformed. the interns to meet on people's plate. beyond like, you know, you go to hosted the, the instigation. newspapers of there are mentions on that force that dates back to the late 19th century, oftentimes led by city officials. and there were many wrapped 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 these kind of almost per book on the image cheese that people could see the well no, see, this is the left the, these are, these are some of the spectacle was imported from great britain in the 18 seventy's essex, wrapped beating up were dogs and rats were placed in an arena, the rattle drove the shuffle. they say, paul, i think you know how the dogs were trained to attack and massacre the trained wrap, this will get a slice a wraps have suffered a historic tradition of cruelty to the new stuff the. 2 the

media with you, 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 anticoagulants have generally been used. you have to kill rafa speaking to 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 active substances from wrapped poisons with can already be found in many other wild animals as literally 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 are also contaminated. for example,

for aquatic life, the main source of pollution is to sewage system. finding object, waste water is not clean to remove anticoagulants from the water. but these tre, substances are so small that they can still be found. and the treating wastewater offers of kids into sidney, south carolina, spanish board stuff. or there's a study where a car placed in tom's where purified wastewater from sewage treatment plants was discharged. and 80 percent of the liver samples contained at least one active substance from wrapped points. and then the by pool meant to you, munitions. i'm book stuff i asked him how gifting stuff was. i've shockey and, and i'm just shocking of them. on 5, we have to ask ourselves, how can we reduce this environmental impact to convince him the 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 owls falling from the sky, dying of rat poison. of course, i'll make you go back to unit keep goods 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 population have developed a tolerance to which means that the use of poisons of art 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, you 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 interest b,

c'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 ok, trade and energy. whoever is, is the 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 inductive germany to square represented sometimes with the images of rats. so it seems that it's, it's all over the, in the me, off of the nation or what is perceived to be the enemy of the nation. but the wretched image is 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, the imagine i'm keep to told you home in with them all. there's actually been a new image emerging of the rad, in recent years, joe and you with the well known animated film rattle. julie was very helpful. it was the 1st time a rach surfaced from the sewers. it's moving away from the image of darkness, an evil odd the teen. instead, we got a rat that's intelligent, funny, likable. curious right, and hard working. if you call that, you know, looking at the placing read to, to a, if a rat 2 becomes, if you excellent cups in the kitchen, really made a difference. but you've been ultimately helps to shift public opinions more is especially among the young shooting ones 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 wrapped as part of makes a big difference in 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 sewer is, is not effective. so then the next step should be to band poisoning my vend, but i took. 1 the little bit

to what i was to show you, we always released the animals where we caught them or very close to the trap in which they were caught the sounds of to oh, but this is very important. it helps to limit the behavioral stress caused by releasing the animal somewhere else. i strongly hope of tomorrow is because of the, of all the shape of son, 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 to view them 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 them. one of the local yano cupids fee. there is a direct link between the presence of rabble steins and for waste management, who been and poor city administration who loved politics are never far away. right,

sir, ultimately a political issue. expanding cities, waste wells 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 is 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 rats. 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 project, but the phone, 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 and properly get to kind of like make it the basic formats doesn't really exist. freaky must be the only reason why rights come a controlled in housing. if you stick on the bikes damaged your infrastructure.

the humans be to abandon the illusion of is emanating 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 about but we have no choice but to co exist with rabbit school 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

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. this is dw news life from the in israel and has full our launch attacks against each other, escalating the conflict in the middle east. israel says it's will flags have destroyed thousands of rocket launches. and pre emptive strikes in southern lebanon has full access be launched, a large number of drones against israel. and a new push for peas in the middle east appears to be over before it's begun. how must this? it's delegation has to lift cairo, whether talks were beginning, beheld, is well agreed, that tends to tarlton, egypt aimed at ending the war with how much.