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In mesmerizing battles between cats and snakes, you might have wondered how cats deftly evade the snake's swift strikes and emerge victorious. Here's the sec...
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According to Science News ’ Susan Milius, the researchers tracked kills with the help of motion-triggered cameras that recorded 306 “active-animal” videos. Based on these clips, the ...
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There’s a new sheriff in Washington D.C. alleys: adopted feral cats. But as rodent-killing machines, New York’s terriers are even better.
Washington D.C.The killer is caged, his prey just beyond reach. Soon he’ll prowl the streets, but for now he’s hiding under a fluffy fleece bed, only his small pink nose and white paws poking out.
His name is Miso, and he’s a cat with his work cut out for him. Miso’s new home is an alley in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington D.C., and it’s teeming with rats. More than 50 trash and recycling bins line the alley behind a stretch of row houses, and almost every plastic bin has a fist-sized hole where a rat has chewed through. At dusk, dozens of rats scurry across the alley, diving into the holes to collect their dinner.
That’s what Miso is here to help with. He’s a feral cat, born on the streets and brought here not as a pet, but to do a job. He’ll spend about three weeks in the covered cage being fed and sheltered as an incentive to stick around once he’s released from the cage—when, if he follows the human plan, he’ll start catching rats.
Feral cats are just one kind of animal that some cities are embracing for their rat-killing prowess. In New York City, a group of rat-hunting terrier, dachshund, and mutt owners patrol the streets. Chicago has even given urban coyotes an uneasy embrace. For the most part, these animals aren’t part of official city programs, but unofficially, most cities are game for whatever kills rats. The question is how much help they can offer.
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“My position [on the cats] is if it works, that helps us,” says Gerard Brown, who manages the DC city government’s rat control program. Rat calls to the city hotline are up by a third over the last three years, which Brown attributes to a string of mild winters. “Usually when winters are cold, that acts as a natural exterminator,” he says. In 2016 Mayor Muriel Bowser responded to the growing complaints by declaring a renewed war on rats.
There are two basic ways to kill off a rat population. One is to limit rats’ food supply, which in cities means garbage. Ecologists would call this a bottom-up approach, cutting off the base of the food chain. There’s also the top-down approach: introduce a predator, whether human or feline, to kill the rats.
The mayor’s Rat Riddance program attacks the rodents on all fronts. DC city workers are suffocating rats in their burrows using dry-ice pellets that release carbon dioxide (there can be anywhere from nine to 15 rats in one burrow, Brown says) and deploying fancy new rat-resistant trash cans.
And then there are the cats, separate from the city’s efforts. Miso is the 44th cat “hired” through the Blue Collar Cats program, which the nonprofit Humane Rescue Alliance launched in January. Blue Collar Cats traps feral cats, neuters and vaccinates them, and releases them back into their version of the wild: the streets and alleys of the nation’s capital. Homeowners or business owners agree to provide the cats food and outdoor covered shelter, and in return the cats are expected to exercise their natural instincts as rodent predators. (Cats generally hunt even if they’re fed; the program discourages withholding food in the hopes that a starving cat will hunt more rats.)
“First and foremost for us, this is a lifesaving programs for cats,” says Lauren Lipsey of the Humane Rescue Alliance. Since people are more motivated to care for alley cats that catch rats, the group has embraced the idea as a win-win. So far, she says, the cats’ caregivers seem happy, and report seeing fewer rodents and even some dead ones.
What’s more, some of the alternatives for rodent control, such as poisons that cause rats to slowly die of internal bleeding, are “horribly inhumane” to rodents, Lipsey says, and can accidentally kill pets and wildlife. (See “This Is What Happens When You Use Rat Poison: Flymageddon.”)
On a farm or in a brewery, a cat isn’t likely to face as many rats as in a trash-filled alley, so the question remains as to how many rats a cat might kill in a day. Dogs, in comparison, can be trained to hunt more efficiently, working as a team to flush out rats and kill them as quickly as they can catch them.
In New York City, a rat-hunting club for owners of terriers and other dogs bred as ratters has become famous. The Ryders Alley Trencher-fed Society, or R.A.T.S., has about 65 members, some of whom come from as far away as Ohio for the camaraderie and training. Eight go out on any one hunt.
“A trained dog can kill four to five rats in a minute,” says Richard Reynolds of Tenafly, N.J., who organizes the group. Some dogs specialize in diving into bags of trash to flush rats out, he explains, while others chase them down. The dogs learn to grab a rat by its neck, shake it, toss it, and move on.
It’s nearly instant death for the rats, and the hunters get a warm welcome from neighbors in rat-infested areas. “Sometimes when the dogs make a good catch, we get a standing ovation from the crowd,” Reynolds says.
As for concerns about rat welfare, which have been raised by People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals, Reynolds is unapologetic. "At one time PETA called this a twisted blood sport, and I wish I hadn’t gone on national TV and said I agree,” he jokes. His group doesn’t officially work with the city’s rat-control program, but they’re friendly. City Councilman Eric Ulrich even gave the dogs a commendation in August for their service to New York City.
These rat hunters say they’re not aiming to control the rat population on their own, though. Rats depend on people for food, and ultimately the outcome of the rat wars will depend on limiting their access to garbage. “The city’s goal is to reduce the rat population by 70 percent. You can’t kill all the rats,” Reynolds says.
- 3 min
- Erika Engelhaupt
Sep 27, 2018 · The videos also revealed that in the presence of cats, the rats spent less time in the open and more time moving to shelter. "The presence of cats resulted in fewer rat sightings on the same or ...
Jul 15, 2016 · When the cats are put in place, they’ll kill off a lot of the rat population, “the other rats will get a whiff of (the cats’) pheromones and bug out and leave the area,” Nickerson said.
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