Every so often, at the right time, there seem to be more rats than humans around here. And, apparently, there's little to stop their Per this article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, "rats are remarkably fertile, sometimes birthing 12 pups per litter and as many as seven litters in a year."
The article goes on to cover how city officials are planning on curbing the rat population in the subways.
The Metropolitan Transport Authority has kick-started a pilot program to sterilize female rats. To do this, it is teaming up with Flagstaff (Ariz.)-based SenesTech, a company that invented ContraPest, a product that, when consumed orally by rats, accelerates egg loss and can cause infertility in days.
But!
The article is quick to note that the end goal isn't to completely get rid of the rats. That may actually make things worse.
Said SenesTech CEO Loretta Mayer: "The overall goal is to diminish rat populations — but not wipe them out entirely because that would simply cause an influx of new rats."
What do you think of the idea? Could anything possibly go wrong?
[Image via]
13 comments:
I say kill em all and let Chuck E Cheese sort em out!
what happens to the RTHawk in TSPark if / when it eats some of those rats?
I-)
@12:44 I think they are talking about using that stuff down in the subway tunnels.
Right. This is only in the subways. I added that to the post.
I don't know about rats, but do you think it would work on the drunk green-shirted/hatted participants of the 3 day St Patrick's day pub crawl?
Kidding!
Get ready for the sequel to "The Food of the Gods"! Starring Marjoe Gortner!
Terrifying. "Accelerated egg loss" sounds like dropping more eggs at one time, and if that happens during ovulation then that litter of a dozen could be 30 or 50 at once. This is going to cause a rat explosion.* Flame throwers remain one of the only effective defenses against rats.
(* none of my theory has any sort of science behind it)
Anonymous 12:44, If Parks decides to use this, not to worry. The Red-tailed Hawk will then feast on pigeons, squirrels, mice, and voles, etc. :)
Maybe chains can sub out the horsemeat for the rats. Should we bring it up with 7-11?
I think I made this suggestion in the comments here over a year ago, when discussing the explosion of rats in TSP. Hmph.
Did we learn nothing from the movie Mimic?? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimic_(film)
Do we seriously need some new version of a rat?
Or Jurassic Park? Somehow nature or will find a way.
Now Mandate it at McDonald's
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