which this rodents image that's on, don't feel coming up after a short break. my money keeps the can. thanks so much for watching dw, the why do humming does not get drunk. why do grab a tasteful waves, squeeze all bodies. how much do we need to put a pond cream for help find the offices get smaller on dw science and i'll take 10 of the

new world a weeks. as the sunsets over big cities, the world of rach a world that a shadow humans for e. rats of the stuff of horror stories and urban minutes, often boating our disgust and fears. their scene is dirty, aggressive and devious carriers of deadly diseases. and every where 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 boast, 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 wondered 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 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 his 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 cedrin. this is a very small young wrapped up in the heats what's known as a brown wrap to fix it. scientific name is wrapped 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 southfield. this won't tell you. okay, so i go real huh? oh, don't goof, a michel, true that this rap one of the common rap, 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 anybody. 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 existence with us and then the roof was it is something you meant. oh, there was increased interest in it, and when you, and even a growing goodwill towards this little animal, not a while ago, the present food video is of the, to the ship 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 computers you. for me, the armageddon project is an attempt at answering fundamental biological questions that have eluded us to push it. it's a 1st for parents or even for friends 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 found

a 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 there. oh, we spin rach, who always like the idea of using small and unlikely remains to tell kind of the big picture stories about human history. tiny wrap. those meetings to be sent to meet us, connecting them from lots of different places and getting together a story of what they can tell us about connectivity between different human system . that's the nature of a settlement. and so basically it's tracing when, when, when understanding the presence is behind that, using those processes to understand the end of the roman empire and the development of medieval trade, the human side. and then trying to understand how much of

a role 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 us 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. for 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 rats quite similar to us

the. 2 the, the using key project is laid by tool most i 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 can look the stories that that's what whatever is the situation. humans are able to add up the mutual standard wymond a. now when i'm working with russ i see very much of a similar situation. so the greatest thing with the rest is that how well they can take each situation on. i'm thrive, you and then the rest of my 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 asked us to come along. we get to the time 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 because scared of everything you but they quite quickly learn what the status and what is it does come by. it makes it easier to 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 of lots of different unemotional running around. for example, on the truck place up the we had mice truck. so going to buy balancing the last or right trucks, but the, the smaller the bins and 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 barrels inside the stone wall here. so they're running from the here and then moving around the car caught in 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 rathole. several ranch are very social animals. they bring food to the nations of weak family members. and when forced to choose between rescue and your fellow right and a piece of chocolate experiments show that rats will usually choose to help the

these cities aren't alone. the team in berlin is also interested in the parallel worlds of rach, they're working to assess the use of rec poison in the city sewers. 2 for decades, berlin is bunk ranch, wood, road dentist, sides with severe consequences for the environment. 2 but no one knows that the pesticides are the right approach. and if it makes sense to guard the city with the industrial amounts of rank boys and yeah, the fossils clear sweep now started our research project direct control and sewers . we 1st had to catch at least 60 animals from different populations around berlin was to create a basis for genetic analysis to see if the animals are related in the additional language and switch huffman on that and so connected to them. and then we have very little of prior knowledge about wild wraps of 895. got it kind of

most if that's why that's different. what can you mean? the last one has 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, all the screwed up 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. provide the 5 estimate jordan, oscar viewed. 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 fact finding mission about what the health risks are that routes. how was in think hoover's downtown east side. so really understanding where the rats and what diseases they carry. 2 we caught 700 rats and identified something like 1200 related relationships. so parent us, 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'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 blocks, the, the, the don't get you. we often use this method with rodents in our research of that to

. yeah, we attach an ear tag with a number of mom. she don't want y'all said little mention, it's like an id card. you'll see 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 gone. they killed all summer the objects put on there is a key 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 the says kind of concentration of evidence that, that threats turning up in electrical human settlements comes from the industry civilization. and from that they may have strep beyond the region. 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 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 in the what was a big city in the roman period. it became less important on the smaller that's well

connected. and then it became the biggest city again into the viking age. and you can see reps mirror and that 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 you cannot make system on the ground route 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 elk elegy is the idea that wraps were the main need to blame for the spread of pain in the past, particularly in the black death. this often comes across as a very polarized debate. 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 rats, everywhere or alternative the it shouldn't really be it that 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 rats 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 call in ease 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 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 aren't 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. no. so you know magazine is part of the armageddon. and thanks to our partner, 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. radson carried 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 theoretically 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. 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 sponges the when we think about the rich, the only easiest which lead me in the sweet system. and if you kind of like, if there's a place where you're going to expose this even put that sense, sewage system is pretty, pretty much. so i think when we think about sort of like publish and spread the probably medium all pets and spread from rest to humans, properly a huge amount of purpose in fred for a few minutes to read. i like these, these come but turn around the idea of the human steve, the one who gets solved, but this is from, of the most. it's very most of the way around because it's the, it's a humans work. and we have spreads about the tense, around the rest of this book, because i believe you all the cycle of, of,

of products, categories from human side. but humans continue from brett so, so that's a bit of a price that the routes have to pay when they are so close to us. i am especially looking at food feeding, enhanced safety because nowadays in present day have sinking. the feeding is really up the heart of the rapt conflict. food feeding is really, really important in finland. it's something that has been done from the 19th century own which 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 good 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 wraps 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 okey, 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 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 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 seer and dissipated for rats. but as i've learned more about their nature, i've learned whatever remarkable animal they are. it's been a journey of self discovery through my encounters with rags to a novelty public know huh. what was it about sending see what i will assist you in to do this?

that's how this is perfect. it's a great specimen of rochester, viji castle view. 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 but this one is really a classic example. this is the wrap. we all know the street rat in 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 have to snow vision. and then what i'll do is just to know the most in the home can even as a biologist, and 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. 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 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 at the harbingers of june and a universal symbol of danger and just toby at the job due to the 1st and the day. so if it was to jeopardy huh. the media always plays a role in shaping ideas and it's no different with routes on the table. it's interesting with the function both as witnesses and producers of social ideas. the mutual during the siege of parents who, early 1870 pairs, with some circled by the prussian army, and completely cut off from the supply of could send you to have a pony. janelle put the parisians began to eat and meek from animals. they had

never eaten before most including route because any more of it, it's mostly, but i just got out a little from village on that is a rep. market was even set up and yet they are so parisians could continue to eat, need to put, could it buys up, is what you have on your 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 hosted. 6 the information newspapers of there are mentions on the floors that dates back to the late 19th century, oftentimes led by c t o. 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 propaganda imageries that people could see the well no, see, this is the left. this was on the nice spectacle was imported from great britain in the 18 seventy's. 6 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 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, 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 wrap. assume that 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. these substances are persist in their own 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 rep poisons. we can already be found in many other wild animals as looking 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. i find the optic waste water is not clean to remove anticoagulants from the water. these trace substances are so small that they can still be found and the treating wastewater, dr to kansas city, south carolina, spanish board stuff. or there's a study where a car for placed in ponds were 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 am book stuff austin, gift stuff with infrastructure and, and i'm just shocking of them. but far 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 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 with us 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. who sons on like you do? you nikki, perch cup. i choose to choose one team from the armageddon project is looking into the use over dentist sites like a rep points and they found and that certain rab population have developed a tolerance which means that the use of poisons of art might have lethal effects on others. be caesar while having no effect on some rags when 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 okay, trade and entities whoever is in 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 united germany, a jew square represented sometimes with the images of wraps. 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, with a 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 them keep to, to do home 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 a 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 between instead we got a rat that's intelligent, funny, likable, curious, and hard working. you cut out, you know, looking at the placing read to, to a, if a rad, who becomes, and for 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. she didn't, she didn't watch 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 a long way. and so i think that sort of perspective shift as routes 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 an action the oven. and the move in steven 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 side and sewers is not effective within 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 cod, silva thought. but this is very important. it helps to limit the behavioral stress caused by releasing the animal somewhere else. i strongly pop up to moment is because of the, of all the shape center of, of, to each 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 co exist with them. if we, for example, reduce the amount of food that is constantly thrown away in our modern cities and colleges, we would have far fewer rats along with one of the 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 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? we've the focus so much on the rach on 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 should be the 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 drugs. but probably kind of like social problem, if they often list people. so there's not that much homeless people in helsinki, which means that the best part, some of that kind of like group which would be, would be, encounter rats and properly get to go to like make it the basic formats doesn't really exist pretty much the only reason why rights come a controlled in house?

like you said, kind of like damage to infrastructure. humans need to abandon the illusion of those women eating rats completely. it hasn't worked so far and there's 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 aid and rods are dangerous. i think that our actions towards managing them make them more or less dangerous, but we have no choice but to coexist with radical ends 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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a very big dream. putting an astronaut on mars. and while there's still a long way to go, these researchers and mentors carrier sites fixed on a cheese destination mars. in 90 minutes on 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 me from golden retrievers. 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 discussing. a donkey series about our complex relationship with animals and the debate. watch now on youtube, d. w documentary the this is the w news live from the land, a ceasefire between israel and hezbollah in 11 on has now taken effect 11 on deploys its military to the south to enforce the truth as many who fled sufficing for ton to the. also coming up on the program, the maybe a has to the polls to elect a new paul, i'm and i'm the new president, the ruling policy hopes to extend its plus the full year hold on power in the southern african nation. and it's building a female candidates for the 1st time the .