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Parisians will only return to the polls for the 2020 municipal elections, but the presence of rats in the French capital is already guiding candidates for the post of mayor.
Recent research has shown that 58% of Parisians are dissatisfied with the administration of Anne Hidalgo and that only 29% of them would vote if elections were held today – and the rodent population of the city is one of the problems she faces in her daily life in front of the town hall.
Already in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari had to work at home for several weeks last year, after rats infested his office.
Chicago, an American city badociated with many symbols, including music and sports, is now known as the "rat capital of the United States".
If it's about a war, humans are losing. And things will certainly get worse: scientists warn that the Increasing urbanization and global warming will result in an increase in rodent populations worldwide.
Urbanization: more buildings for humans … and rats too
Rats do not exhibit risk only for political careers
They spread diseases, undermine food security and wreak havoc in human-built structures, for example, a study by Cornell University estimates that these animals cause United States of s losses of $ 19 billion (about $ 74 billion) each year.
According to United Nations estimates, human populations that by 2050, nearly 70% of the world's population will live in cities, compared with 55% currently.
More people and more buildings in the cities mean more food and shelter for rats that have been living for thousands of years. Rattus norvegicus known as the rat or brown rat, is one of the most common species in the world.
Higher temperatures will lead to longer reproductive cycles, that is, with the birth of more puppies, not to be overlooked in the case of rodents. According to experts, some mice can create a nest with 1250 individuals in just 12 months.
"Rats are a terrible enemy and we must accept that it is impossible to eradicate them," said Steve Belmain, professor of ecology at the University of Greenwich in London.
" The problem we have with the approach of the war is that we simply react to the enemy rather than to the enemy. enemy. "
Belmain is part of a group of researchers who are trying to change the" military discourse. "We proactively plan before attacking," says Michael Parsons, biologist at Fordham University from New York.
"It does not help much that we know more about giant pandas than about brown mice." There is a lack of scandalous research about them. "
To illustrate his dismay, Parsons cites a startling statistic: some researchers have calculated that rats have caused more deaths than all wars combined over the past thousand years.
These animals were badociated, for example, with to the black plague., a bubonic plague pandemic that decimated one third of the European population in the fourteenth century, but some scientists wondered whether it was rodents and not human fleas and lice ., the real culprits of the pandemic.
"Rats do not go away because they have learned to live near us and not to be frightened by humans. Still, we are incredibly in the dark about what we know about their habits. "The solutions used today are to kill animals, especially by poisoning, but this creates risks for the environment and can humans and other animals also.
Scientists have also reported cases in which rats develop immunity against certain types of substances believed to kill them.
In addition, according to some organizations. Like people (Peta), poisoning is an extremely painful method to kill these animals.
Cats do not notice
"Poisons are useless, dangerous to humans and extremely cruel because animals spend days suffering before they die of pain, "said a spokesman for Peta.
" When animals die, the resulting increase in food availability in lagging an acceleration of mating between survivors and newcomers, resulting in an increase in populations. "
Some cities also relied on the use of predators against the infestation of rats . Washington, for example, has placed "platoons" of cats in the United States capital
During the five months that he and his team have been monitoring a colony of rats in Brooklyn In New York State, cats only managed to kill two of the estimated 150 rats.
"Cats and rats are more likely to ignore or avoid to engage a direct conflict, especially when mice reach a certain size, "says Gregory Glbad, ecologist specialist of diseases at the University of Florida.
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Contraceptives in the rat
In 2016, the American company Sensetech announced the creation of a new antraceptive for sterilizing rats. In the words of the company's founder, Loretta Mayer, the invention "would change the world"
. The ContraPest product has been tested in various environmental types and, according to Sensetech, resulted in an "additional reduction of 46% in the activity of rats compared to the use of a lethal method only. "
ContraPest was tested in New York last year – the city would host more than 2 million mice. But some experts are more skeptical about the effectiveness of this product.
"Rats that do not bite at the hook can actually breed more, as competition for food will be less lively," said Peter Banks, an expert at the University of Sydney. Scientists
What seems to be a consensus is that the interruption of the availability of food for the rats is the key to keeping the populations of these animals at a distance
"If the authorities are dealing with problems," he says. such as garbage storage and lack of sanitation, this can have profound effects, "says Steve Belmain
With less food, rats turn to themselves. According to Mike Parsons
"The rodent industry is worth $ 1 billion. But simple gestures like carrying trash with you instead of and throwing it in a public trash can be more effective. "
" With less food, rats will have to adjust their population. "
But for Jan Zalasiewicz, a paleobiologist from the University of Leicester, if things go as they are, the future may belong to rats.
" Rats are Zalasiewicz said to the BBC as one of the best examples of species we have helped to spread around the world and that we have successfully adapted to many new environments, "Zalasiewicz told the BBC.
"They will be the protagonists of the Earth's geological future and will survive to human."
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