Dear MEL Topic Readers,
These cities have big rat problems, and there’s one thing to blame
While we don’t know how many, most of us live with more rats than we imagine. They find shelter in various urban spaces like sewers, abandoned buildings, cracks in walls, under sidewalks, and within dense vegetation and eat discarded food scraps from humans, accessing them through trash cans, dumpsters, and food spills on the ground, which are often abundant in urban environments. Though rats live only for a few years, they are very fertile. Females can become pregnant when they are only a few months old and can produce six to 12 offspring up to a dozen times a year. If they live in a warm environment where food is plenty like in cities, the number of rats could increase easily. According to the data collected from 13 US cities, Toronto, Tokyo, and Amsterdam, the number of sightings and trappings has increased over the last 12 years or so. As warmer climates and environments could help rats grow and reproduce for a longer time, we may be bothered by more rats in the future, which is a problem as they gnaw and damage wires and cables and transmit diseases like leptospirosis, hantavirus, and plague to humans. Another impact of global warming and urbanization.
Read the article and learn about rats that are dwelling in cities.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/31/climate/rats-cities-temperature-increase/index.html
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