says 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 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 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 and our research of it 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. 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 gone. they killed all summer the objects put on. there isn't 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 help 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 in as i said 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 search is kind of concentration of evidence that, that threats turning up in electrical 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 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 rats spread around the world by human great connections. and they're also dependent on the kind of sacraments we have. weighing new york is a big city in the roman period. it became less important or the smaller,

less well connected. and then it became the biggest city again into the viking age . and you can see rats mirror and that what i think is happening here with this kind of rise in full and then rise again of rep populations. is it that tracking the nature of the human he 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 15. so 16 century. but the majority view based must be on documentary records is that it's bad in the 18th century. one of the main things that people will think about if you say wraps in history or perhaps in ok, elegy is the idea that wraps with the main need to blame for the spread of taking the task, particularly in the black death. this often comes across is a very polarized debate. 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 a fact was the presence of wraps in the way that historically, kinetics developed. if you took the rats away, which we still have had attend damage on the scale. if the fact that i suspect it wouldn't destiny, but that's something which is still very much debate to when it comes to human risks associated with rats. there were a couple of really interesting things that we found. one is not all ras, terry disease. and actually,

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

that these diseases are more common in countries that are less developed, but then even with in a city. and this was really interesting, different populations or neighborhoods are more at risk. so we were really focused on the downtown east side, which is called vancouver's porous postal code. and that's because it has this confluence of factors. it has dilapidated buildings in adequate infrastructure and sanitation, all of which can attract rats. and then you've got people that are adequately house . they're on the street. they might be using drugs, they might be doing sex work. and so they have lots of opportunity to 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 c was so no magazine is part of the army get in. 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 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 you trust

what else we found were that rats also carried a lot of human bacteria and viruses. so they act almost like little sponge in the when we think about the rich, the only easiest which lead me in the sweet system. and if you kind of like, if there's a place and you're going to expose this even put that sense, sewage system is pretty cool. so i think when we think about sort of like publish and spread that probably medium all pets and spread from wraps to humans, properly a huge amount of purpose and fred for a few minutes to read. i like the since these come but turn around the idea of the 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 have friends 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 in helsinki city 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 on which people it has engaged. many people want to feed, but it's bought. city officials have forbidden it in many places, and this can cause debates and heated discussions between neighbors because both feeding is seen or something that can benefit around birds being fed is a problem everywhere. it attracts rats. and once they show up,

counter measures are never far behind. but scientific research into the long term effects of rec control has been lacking. it's unclear if it actually reduces any health risk. the no one's actually done the studies to see if trapping and killing 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 ok to 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 stuff we can measure, visit the of all i'll make you don't. i admit that before working on the armageddon project, which 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 lived 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 route we all know the street right 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 nervous because skill sets in bed for a man i do. i just know the memo. don't use use to know the most in the home. can you even as a biologist, and i have to admit that i knew very little about this animal. and that i had many subconscious, unfounded lease 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 as harbingers of june and the universal symbol of danger and just toby at the job due to the 1st and the day. so if it was to jeopardy ha, the media always plays a role in shaping ideas, and it's no different with rats on the table. it's interesting that they function both as witnesses and producers of social ideas. the mutual, during the siege of parents of early 1870 pairs was encircled 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 ralph peters and offered to mostly, but i just got out a little fun milledgeville and that is a rep. market was even set up and yet they are so parisians could continue to eat meat to put could he buys up to school to the level this really left its mark on the french getting started at this moment was when the rep was transformed in turns to meet on people's plate beyond actually the hosted the information newspapers of there are mentions on the fact force that dates back to the late 90 century, oftentimes which 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 know, 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 i'm trained wrap, this will get a slice, a wraps have separate a historic tradition of cruelty to the new stuff the. 2 the,

it was me, you would, 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 anti coagulant and have generally been used. you have to kill rafa speaking, but since these are blood clotting inhibitors, which have the advantage that they have a slightly delayed effect. so they ride some just enough poison, you are 5 at the same time, the substances are persist in that one value a cumulative and toxic, and which means that they accumulate in the environment on end are toxic to other living organisms in industry. and in recent years, we've been shocked to learn that the act of substances from 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 cleans 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 placed in ponds where purified wastewater from sewage treatment plants was discharged. and 80 percent of the liver samples contained at least one act of substance from wrapped points. and then the pool meant to you, munitions. i'm book stuff austin. and gifting stuff with infrastructure and, and i'm just shocking of them, but we have to ask ourselves, how can we reduce this environmental impact to convince him, how can we prevent these toxins from accumulating further than the human. some of our tests, so alarming results to test 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 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 comes 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 center 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, 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 it not to 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. 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, very nice. i'm keep to, to do home in with them all. there's actually been a new image emerging of the rad, in recent years, showing you with the well known animated film rattle to a was very helpful. uh huh. it was the 1st time a wraps surfaced from the sewers. it's moving away from the image of the 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 route to, to a, if a rad, who becomes, and few excellent cups in the kitchen, really made a difference, but ultimately helps to shift public opinion 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 . 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 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 the help of people. oh, don't rush, jacob, son of 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 of gold, we would have far fewer rats along with one of the local yano cupids 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, pausing, contaminates the environment, forming humans as much as anything else. but what's the solution? we've the focus so much on the rach a itself that we don't see all the complex interconnections it has with our daily lives. for example, the relationship between rats and garbage or do we look at the impact of rats on the urban poor? so there's no point in going in and getting rid of the rats when the whole building is falling down and filled with garbage. instead,

having by laws that hold landlords accountable for environmental sanitation is going to increase the overall living conditions in those facilities. and also as a secondary consequence, get rid of the rest. so that's a solution to a wrap problem. that is a policy solution. it's a beautiful kind of like big picture of how society also works. i know that in vancouver projects, 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 that's possible, that kind of like group which would be, would be, encounter rats and unpopular get. they're going to like make it the basic formats doesn't really exist. pretty much the only reason why rights come

a controlled in house, like you said on the bikes that issue 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 or not. but we have no choice but to coexist with rabbits 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

. 2 the shift your guides to life and it digital you know, the latest online trend, navigate your way through the digital jungle global perspective. we'll be, you'll guide and show you what's possible. really matches to you shift in 15 minutes on the w. we see sick animals, genetically deformed animals dying animals. we witness so much suffering there. more than you could ever imagine. bringing criminals,

happy traitors to heal. dog trafficking market is west 1000000000 euros. most of the animals undocumented. and i'll often mistreated, sort of the activist shining lines in 30 minutes on d w. the think the to oh, just twice. think ahead or with outside the box on your but always remember to sing for yourself. we all had to sign was incredibly like, this is the driving you with free information.

these are made for mine the the, this is dw news life from berlin. serious 2nd largest city is now mostly in rebel hands. as long as fighters celebrate their advance into a level in the biggest challenge in years to the review him of bushel, i'll a saw also coming up, members of the use new top leadership team visit keep as ukraine faces yet another winter of russian attacks the i mike, look and thanks for joining us. we begin with the biggest trip.