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?
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