of not near the end is level by the thank you very much on a message from me and the new steam fun. i'll do not go away up next. oh, don't feel delves into the realm of urban rats. don't as god was invalid from you in between the we are all set we are watching to see all the to bring you the story behind the new the will on about. i'm biased information for free might say do 10 in the

new world a weeks as the sun set silver, big cities, 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 their scene is 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 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 hills where it's 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 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 there are 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 co exist with rats, with this few health risks and fears as possible. that means questioning

previous but leaves 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 such in. this is a very small young wrapped up in the heats what's known as a brown wrap to fix it. scientific name is rach as nor vega course, and it's the rat 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. she'll kill this won't tell you don't like a real ha uh, don't group. i mean it's all true that this rap, one of the common rap, also known as a sewer rap is quite typical in urban environments. so they knew that it was that

causes conflict 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 then the roof. was it something you meant? oh, there's increased interest in that in one use, and even a growing goodwill towards this little animal, not a while ago, the present to jump video is of you to do this. if to tell you about, keep you. that'd be cool for mazda to push on that you drove off the phone or the keystone by 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 details on the pleasant suzuki promos. you can 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 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, making 3 centimeters now, collecting 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 and how much rule they could just item 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 as harmful and on useful. but then again, we have pet rents and laboratory rats. so racks are they have multitude of meanings in human cultures of the present. a relationship between you mentioned rats, 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, can look the stories that that's what whatever is the situation. humans are able to add up to a mutual standard wymond and no one else that can be rough. i see very much of a similar situation. so the greatest thing with the rest is that how well they can take each situation and thrive. you and then the rest and going laboratory routes which have been studied for $150.00. 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 tongue of a kind of like medium. so for us to kind of like sacrifice their lives for the for the find the so we know that the rest of them are scared of everything new. but these look like that would be just new for me because i'm scared of everything you but they quite quickly learn what is the truth and what is it does come like it makes it easier on somebody in human environment. so going to like it's more difficult to say in another room so such and such, all right? but makes it very interesting. some kind of like in order for the plan which is

quite a few the understanding is lots of different unemotional running around. for example, on the truck place up the we had mice truck. so gonna buy balancing me last direct trucks, but they ask the smaller the bins and again on here you can see on these truck plays, we have red trucks a. so we know the address, i'm moving around here and there is maybe one of the thursdays 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 rock and whether it's the individual rental. several rents 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 reg 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 if the pesticides are 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 rep control and sewers. because we 1st had to catch at least 60 animals from different populations around berlin was to create a basis for a 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 mine just kind of had most s s my us, if was of condemning the last one had the most 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 into the right traps. it has to be animal safe, which is very small market or recruit out 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. 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 ranch move within, clearly defined territories that has some interesting consequences. the 1st phase was sort of a fax finding mission about what the health risks are that routes. how was in a think hoover's downtown east side. so really understanding where are the rats 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 to move between those blocks. they

don't spread their diseases with them. so what we found using laptops 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 are 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 is very little contact between the raf families. if we know that rats don't move much among city blocks, you know that your neighborhood route really is your neighborhood, right. and you can target your management approaches to the scale of the city blocks the, the low don't. can you?

we often use this method with rodents in our research of it to yeah, we attach an ear tag with a number. she don't want, y'all said don't 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 for where when, and how with the help of all the traps we put up call big football. they killed all summer, the expert on that. it shouldn't take me 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 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. so essentially 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 says kind of concentration of evidence that, that threats turning up in ocoee logical human settlements comes from the end as probably civilization, and from that they may have strep beyond the reach. and so around the same time, we start to see black threats arriving in mesopotamian 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 rats spread around the world by human great connections. and they're also dependent on

that kind of settlements. we have weighing new york is a big city in the roman period. it became less important to 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 that tracking the nature of the human? 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, okay, elegy is the idea that wraps were the main need to blame for the spread of pain in the task, particularly in the black death. this often comes across is a very polarized to date. you'll see news headlines saying it wasn't wraps up through the rats. 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 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 attend demik on the scale, if the black death, i suspect to 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's more rats, 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 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 dilapidated buildings, inadequate 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 army 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 was done preparation. radson carry 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. 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. the only problem is 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 sponges the when we think about the rich, the only easy switch leaving the sewage system. and if you kind of like this, there's a place where you're going to expose this even public sense. sewage system is pretty, pretty much. so i think when we think about sort of like publishing spread the probably medium all pets and spread from wraps, the humans broke only a huge amount of purpose and bread for a few minutes to read. i like the says, these 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 word. and we spreads about the fence around the rest of this book because

i believe the of the cycle of, of, of red, skeptical disease from humans on better humans continue from breath. so that's a bit of a price that the roads have to pay when they are so close to us. i am especially looking at food feeding, enhanced safety, 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 own woods, people in helsinki. many people want to feed, but it's bought. city officials have forbidden it in many places. and this can cause debates and heated discussions between neighbors because both feeding is seen or something that can beneficent 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, okay, do these rats that are, are remaining, do 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 rats 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 rats, 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 . ready love way too much is visit the of all, i'll make you don't. i admit that before working on the armageddon project, which 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 a novelty aquatic nova. what was it about?

let me see what i will assist you in to do this. this for now. this is perfect. it's a great specimen of rach us nerve. huge because of you. it's also called brown, right. and lives in the city puts a round, is the typical color. although there are individuals with very dark or very light further, 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. think of it, 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 red as nerve each because skill set us in bed for a man i do. i just know the memo. computers used to 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, the least about the rad boomers police were maybe even childhood memories because my mother has eroded phobia, who and, and then i was one of those people who were afraid of raps because like,

without really knowing why susan, 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 the universal symbol of danger and just toby at the judge due to the 1st and the day. so if it was just jeopardy huh. the media always plays a role in shaping ideas and it's no different with routes 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 encircled by the prussian army and

completely cut off from the supply of good. send you to a party. 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 out a little pulse formulas on this is a rep. market was even set up in the late as like a super easy and could continue to eat, need to put, could it buys up is what, you know, most 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 plates, beyond actually the us it, the information newspapers of there are mentions on that force that dates back to the late 19th century, oftentimes led by c, take official 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 to his st. 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, the, me here with you as soon as i please 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. 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 with can already be found in many other wild animals as lovely 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. i find the optic 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 act of substance from wrapped points. and then the bi pool meant here, munitions. i'm book stuff i asked him how 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 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 and they die from internal bleeding. yeah, something has to be done, but off in vancouver and it'd be 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 albums falling from the sky, dying of rat poison whose sons i'll make you, do you need keep goods cause i choose to choose one team from the armageddon project is looking into the use over dentist sites like the rep points and they found, found that certain rab population was to have developed a tolerance to which means that the use of poisons, of one might have lethal effects on others. be caesar 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 rat. so need me to

that because 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, a jew square represented sometimes with the images of rats. so it seems that it's, it's all over the enemy, off of the nation, or what is perceived to be the enemy of the nation. but the wretched image is slowly improving. the rats are being stuffed as part of the powers 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, very nice. 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 around the surface from the sewers. it's moving away from the image of darkness and evil. 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 who becomes an excellent cups in the kitchen, really made a difference. but ultimately helps to shift public opinions more is, especially among the young. she didn't, she didn't, was 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. wrapped 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 said even has been made 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 minutes,

but i took the little bit to what else to use this only be do we always release 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 pulled off tomorrow is because the group of people, oh, don't rush, jacob, son of to these who 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 coexist with them. if we, for example, reduce the amount of food that is constantly thrown away in our modern cities of gold, we would have far fewer rats along with all the ya know to put the, there's a direct link between the presence of rabble sizing for waste management. and poor

city administration who loves you politics are never far away. right, sir, ultimately a political issue. expanding cities, waste wealth 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 threats 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 raft of 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 bit of a kind of like big picture of how society also works. i know that in vancouver projects, but they've found out that the homeless people flow to 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 the rest. but probably kind of like social problem, if they often list people. so this, not that much homeless people in hey listen, give, which means that bestbuy, somebody about kind of like group which would be, would be income threats and properly get to go to like make it the basic formats

doesn't really exist. freaking must be only reason why rights come a controlled in house. i give you some kind of likes demonstrating firstbrook. just humans need to abandon the illusion of 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 rac 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 a, the 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 coexist with routers. 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

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