Ologies with Alie Ward - Urban Rodentology (SEWER RATS) with Bobby Corrigan

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

RATS: They love pizza. They invade taquerias at midnight. They scurry. They cuddle. They outsmart. They inspire movies that inspire musicals. Proving that not just woodsy megafauna can be charismatic, rats have lives we would never suspect. Globally-lauded Urban Rodentologist Dr. Robert Corrigan, or Bobby if you like, has been studying these animals in their big-city ecosystem for decades and he is a wonder-filled joy. Learn about rats’ origin story, the difference between a rat and a mouse, where they live, their preferred “food dialects,” and how to (hopefully humanely) keep one out of your house -- or car? Might as well start to love and respect them, because we’re not-too-distantly related and one day… they may be steering the ship. Follow Bobby at Twitter.com/Rodentologist Sponsor links: www.alieward.com/ologies-sponsors A donation went to the Yash Gandhi Foundation: https://www.ygf4icell.org/ More links and info at alieward.com/ologies/rodentology Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes! Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's that guy who's asleep upright on the bus and doesn't know that you're staring at him, waiting to see if he'll wake up. Alleyward, back with an episode that's just like musical to our ears. If you are following the recent release of the fan-created TikTok Ratatouille musical that came out this past week, but even if literally none of those words in succession made any sense to you, that's okay. This ology is one that is of dark intrigue and cuddles and appalled curiosity, so better to arm yourself with facts and trivia about the critters that you curse, rats.

But not just any rats, city rats, sewer rodents, pizza rats, chipotle goblins, the outdoor pets that none of us own. Let's learn to love them. Okay, but first, some love for you. Thank you to the patrons, thanks to the folks who take a second to subscribe and rate it really matters so much, and the ones who take a minute or two to leave a review of which I read all while I clutch my heart, and then I read one aloud, such as this week from Kristen G, who says, hooked, absolutely love this podcast.

It comes with a dad, and I feel like we have a healthy and inquisitive relationship. Join the fam. You will be suckered into eating Tim Tams, huffing trees, and cutting banks. Also, Erin loves turtles. You named a cat after me, and no, it's not weird. It's great. Okay, so rodentology comes from the Latin word, rodere, meaning to gnaw at or eat away, which is very sexy.

And the word rodent covers thousands of species that we could not possibly encapsulate in one interview. But for this episode, we're talking rats, because this urban rodentologist is the expert on sewer rats. That's right. There's a guy for that. And he has the Twitter handle rodentologist. He's got it.

He is cited in hundreds of articles about the outside animals that maybe you are not looking for as a roommate. Now, if there is an avocado being nibbled on at midnight or a slice dragged on a stairwell, his phone is a jingle for quotes and insight. And so when he returned an email saying, sounds super about doing this interview, I honestly think I gasped. And during the interview itself, I enjoyed this chat so, so, so much. And I remember having thought, I have the best job on earth.

He's that sweet and honest and endearing and curious and wonder filled of a rodentologist. You're gonna love him. I'm so excited for you. Okay. So he got his PhD at Purdue University in rodentology, studying rodent control technology for pig barns and chicken facilities, and was a long time research scientist for the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He's taught rat academy to city planners, and he's known all over the world for his

knowledge and compassion and detective work and helping humans and rats coexist. So he owns RMC pest management consulting and is regularly called on by the press. So we hopped on a call. It was truly one of my greatest professional joys. And I think I love rats now. So grab a snack from the garbage and learn all about everything from their superpower to their teeth, to their scaly naked tail, their cute pink little hands, relationships, their preferred food dialects, how they communicate, where they sleep, how big they really get,

the best real estate for rats, how history books gave them the shaft, how many rats one couple can have. And of course, how to deal humanely if they ever become an unwelcome house guest. With likely one of the world's most beloved rodentologists, Dr. Robert Corrigan. Can you go by Bobby too? Correct. I go by Bobby. Or Dr. Corrigan.

I usually just go by Bobby Corrigan. And it's he or him too, right? Yes. Okay. Great. I'm so excited to talk to you. You have no idea. I have been screencapping every article that you've been quoted in for like the last year

or two. This is like holy grail of rodentology. Thank you. Thank you. Can you tell me a little bit about what got you interested in rodents, particularly urban rodents? Where about are you based and have you always been based in an urban environment? Well, I'm based just north of New York City along the Hudson River.

And I was born in Brooklyn, raised on Long Island. And I took a two-year course at a state university on Long Island, State University of Farming dale. And I met an entomologist, urban entomologist who was teaching a course. And it was him, Dr. Frishman, that inspired me to study the animals that share our urban environment. And from there, I graduated, took a job to save money for the rest of my college. And I took a job as a pest control guy in New York City.

And from there, I ended up in the sewers. New guy gets the crazy job, so they put me in the sewers to bait for rats, which sounds pretty gross. But I'm a nature nerd, so I just thought, this is so cool. Even though I had to crawl in and out of sewers for several months before they promoted me and kind of allowed me above ground. But that's where it all started. And then when I went back to college at Purdue University in graduate school, I went on and

said, I want to study rodents. And they said, OK, so that was the path. When you say, I want to study rodents, do you get to select the type of rodents? Or do you have to learn about every single rodent under the sun and then go take a job working with, say, urban rats? Yeah, it's a great question. But first, and I was very lucky with the scientists at Purdue. They said, as long as it's going to take you through this scientific process, and it almost

doesn't matter what you want to study in that program. You could have studied earthworms, which I thought were pretty cool, just that in itself. But I said, well, I remember my days in the sewers of New York City, and I didn't know what I was looking at, quite honestly. But I thought it was pretty cool. It was pretty complex. And that's what I asked to do. And they said, go for it.

So I asked specifically for just urban rodents, which is only three species. It's the house mouse, it's Norway rats, and it's the roof rat, just those three. And that's enough for 100 careers right there. So that's where I am these days. What were the sewers like? What was your first day like in the sewers? Did you see just what kind of things do you see down there? What does it smell like?

Is it scary? Is it fun? Well, I have to tell you that when I first climbed down a ladder into a sewer of New York City, my heart was pounding in my chest. Because I mean, you don't know what you're going into, right? Even though someone had to show me, take me down and show me what to do, what not to do, and these kinds of things. But it's pretty intimidating, to be honest with you, and there's not much to it.

So it's not exciting. It's just a tunnel. And right below your feet is a low stream of effluent that goes by. And because there's enough air exchange alley, a lot of people think, oh, it must smell horrible and stuff, but it actually does not. And I mean, you don't really want to stand there and stare at what goes by, to be honest with you. You can imagine.

But at the same time, it's just a tunnel, the tunnels I were in were the old tunnels. That's where the rats like to go, and they're made out of brick. And there's not hordes of rats either. Everyone thinks it's these monster populations of rats. It's like five rats here and there scurry about, then you don't see any for 50, 60 feet, then another three, then so forth and so on. You know, mammals are mammal, whether it's a whale or a rat in a sewer or the whale in the ocean.

To me, being a nature nerd, I just said, holy cow, there's these animals that live in a pitch black down here completely, but yet they know their way around, they communicate. I see them muzzling each other and so forth. I was all, to me, super cool. It's so interesting to think too, when you're bustling around Manhattan, that there's just an entirely different world, an ecosystem under your feet all the time. Exactly. That's exactly it.

So it couldn't set it any better. And how did these cosmopolitan New York rats, how did they get down there from Norway or was it China? Did they come over on boats? How did North America get this population? Well, you know, the history seems to say that they originated in Central Asia. You know, there's some debate there exactly where, but for the most part, you know, it's probably just slightly west of Turkmenistan.

And over time, with the trade routes, you know, grains, spices, silk road, this kind of thing. They made their way into Europe and once into Europe, of course, especially with early trade with North America and explorers, over they came with the ships. Probably the first rats was the black rat arrived in Jamestown, Virginia is the best history we have on that. And the rats from there, if not from ships directly in Philadelphia, New York City, all the ports of the East Coast, you know, there were thousands of ships.

If you look at some of the paintings of the late 1700s and early 1800s, you know, the harbors were packed like traffic jams with ships from all over the world trying to, you know, colonize and bring trade and so forth. OK, side note, what happened to all those ships? Well, over time, they crumble, they crash, they sink, but don't worry. We have an episode about maritime archaeology, i.e. shipwrecks coming up. But for now, rats just packing their bags full of cheese and boarding cruises.

Rats love ships. They're by the water. So we were probably bringing in pockets of rats every single day from different parts of Europe and Asia. And from there, they found, especially in New York, Ali, they found, you know, it's an island, Manhattan's an island. It is streams everywhere. There was lots of earth everywhere.

People were populating and putting out their refuse. And so the rats probably said, wow, this this North America deal is fabulous. New world. Yay for the new world. And how do they do so well in low light? Because I imagine, too, if they're in the cargo hull of an old, creaky ship hundreds of years ago, it's got to be low levels of light, not a lot of vegetation, too. How do they do so well in that environment?

Well, you know, that's a credit to these species. You know, they're so innovative. They're so adaptable. They're they're very creative in the way they can find food and what they will eat. And if need be, they will eat the same thing day after day after day. But in those creaky holes of the ship, as you put it, you know, they were a lot of time stealing, stealing the food of people on board. They were solely sailors, you know, they would get up to get to their own food and

did see that the rats and the mice had gotten into it already. In fact, that's why, you know, there's a word a scientist who wrote ontology used for these animals, it's called the klepto parasites, meaning they parasitize us by stealing from us more than anything. So that's how they got over the ocean is by stealing from from the sailors. And now they're stealing avocados, they're stealing slices of pizza. They seem to have good taste. They sure do.

They have the same taste as we do. They love pizza as everyone knows, but it's got to be New York pizza. It's something in the water. Yeah, exactly. Pizza Rat, side note, made its glorious debut in 2015 when a man named Matt Little bore witness to one blessed rodent dragging a New York slice. Now, 11.6 million people have watched this 14 second clip. And also, side note, nobody knows if it's really the water that makes New York

pizza so legendary. Some theorize it's the decades old crusty ovens or it's the rush of churning out so many slices in a day that leads to hastily made, but better pies. Others say it's just straight up skill. Either way, rats know it's good. And now, people have been asking you a lot with 2020, with coronavirus and the pandemic. The streets look a lot different than they did a year ago. And so how are urban rodents adapting to our social structure changing so much?

It's the biggest question on the docket right now as to what's going on. And of course, nobody was ready for this, right? So nobody had an experiment set up and designed to start taking data. But all the rodentologists around the country, we have been paying close attention. Here in New York, and it's similar to other cities, they've been that opportunist every night, the garbage gets put out on the street for collection. And and in New York alone, we have thousands, something like 22,000 restaurants. So the rats have had it easy for decades.

And every night, all they had to do is leave their comfortable little nest and and come out to the curb and there's waste, human waste, human foods, just in bags and cans. And so all of a sudden, as you know, that disappeared. That overnight that was gone when the city shut down. And right now, by the way, I don't know how it is for you in California, but we are going into our shutdown again right now. And so what we saw initially, what I saw initially is, you know,

they came out the very first night, March 18th was when we shut down and there was no food on the curb. OK, if you're trying to envision this, just picture like 15 to 20 whiskery rodents darting up and down a trash can or maybe coyly peeking out from behind a car tire and size wise, they're around 16 to 20 inches long total. But imagine the rats body from about the tip of your middle finger to your wrist. The tail is kind of like from your wrist almost to your elbow or somebody else's elbow. Picture this as somebody else's arm or don't don't picture a person at all.

I should not. I should just erase this aside. We study rats because they like us. So picture yourself with all of a sudden no dinner, no breakfast the next day, no dinner again, no breakfast for three days in a row. You're going to be stressed, obviously, you're a mammal, you need food. And so these rats, they're stressed. And when they came out in March, the end of March, it was for them very serious because night after night, there was no food.

So two things happened, Ali. One is they started fighting amongst themselves, which is what we would do to start fighting, bickering the strongest rats started killing the weaker rats to consume them. That's the way nature works with almost all animals. And second to that is some of the rats, especially the weaker ones said, well, maybe there's food elsewhere further down the road. Maybe there's food at a long distance and, you know, they're capable mammals of traveling pretty good distances in a short period of time.

So those two things, they started fighting, killing, cannibalizing, and then dispersing, looking for, well, where is the food? And then they also started saying, well, maybe it's during the day. So people started calling and saying, we're seeing rats the middle of the day. They're very brazing. They look brave and like they're going to attack my ankles or something. I tell everyone, look, these are disoriented, stressed out, hungry mammals, whether it's cats or rats or whales or humans, we're all going to have

this similar behavior when you are threatened with death because of hunger. And yes, there are plenty of documented cases of this behavior in the human species, which is way more disgusting than learning about cute, pink-footed, smart, scrappy little rascals. Whose evolutionary strategy is simply, you're going to eat that? Are you thinking that once the pandemic is over, knock on wood, that things will return to normal fairly quickly because they're so adaptable? Or do you think this has forever changed the way that rats are

living in urban environments? I think they're going to return to normal fairly quickly. And, you know, part of the reason, again, rats are so successful and have colonized almost the entire planet Earth is, you know, they have an incredible ability to reproduce as everyone knows. And in fact, if you want to impact a rat population alley, you have to you have to remove about 96 percent of their older individuals. 96 percent. Oh, my God.

That's exactly right. So if you have, let's just say, for the sake of argument, a thousand rats occupying, you know, some city street, Los Angeles or New York or wherever, to get rid of 96 percent of a thousand rats, that takes a lot. That takes too much. That's almost like a complete disease wipe out or this kind of thing. So there's going to be plenty of rats that survive this pandemic, even though we don't have any measurements, 60, 70, we don't know,

38, I don't know how many percent are going to be eliminated. But it's not going to be 96 percent. If it's summertime, when you knock them down to, let's say, 94 percent in six months, they're back to the original population, six months. I know it's an amazing, amazing mammal. Yeah, they can make so many babies. You mentioned something about how they came out of their nests looking for food. And I guess I had never thought about it.

But where are they kicking it when they're not yummy up on a slice on the sidewalk? Like, are they nocturnal? Are they sleeping in comfy little cozy beds that they've made out of leaves? Or where are they hanging out? Where do they sleep? Well, they're very adaptable. So a city rat, if they could talk to us, they'd say, look,

we're from Mongolia area, we're from Asia. We are burrowing mammals. We construct our nest in the ground. Their brain is what's called a geophilic orientation. That means they go into the earth. They're attracted by going down into the earth, geophilic. And so even in a city, their brain says, if I can, I'd like to dig into the earth of this city.

So their number one natural place to go is if there's any kind of what we call available earthen space in a city like a tree pit or a park or somebody's garden that's undisturbed, they will construct a burrow. They dig down about anywhere from 12 to 18 inches on a gradual slope. And about three feet into that tunnel, they create a nest, a bedroom, and they line that with leaves and straw. And in cities, they use love plastic. I find plastic is their beds many times.

And then they construct a back door to that bedroom. Another three feet out in two different directions. They have back doors in case somebody comes in the front door like a snake or rain flood. They have a way out and they disguise those two back doors, by the way. So when that I have forging about to your question, they're down in those very well constructed nests with escape holes built into them. And they don't even have to worry about rank control.

They're having to watch the obituaries to see when something opens up. Build their own. Exactly. Gosh. OK, so obviously rats are smart. They're smarter than we give them credit for, I imagine, right? Well, the research keeps coming in. And, you know, we've learned just in the past three or four years,

if you follow the journal publications from good referee journals, we are learning so much that these animals, we've underestimated them forever in their intelligence. We always said, oh, rats are smart, but but if you do a dive on this, you'll find that now we know they can use tools. We thought that was that we thought that was reserved for the higher quote mammals like geese, but rodent shoes, tools. What kind of tools like a spork or a gun or what do they have?

Well, if they have a hard time, say, getting a piece of food they want out between two rocks, for example, they'll go find a stick, you know, pick it up with their teeth and bring it over and use that to to help them dig out that piece of food, you know. And exterminators are sending me cam footage, which has been amazing. They're putting up these cams and buildings to see where the rats are hiding so they can get rid of them. And they're sending me footage the past couple of years where rats

have been seen picking up these sticks and dropping them on traps to set them off, and then they steal the bait afterwards. Yeah, yeah. Genius. OK, so way back in 2004, when sequencing genomes was not something you could do via a Q-tip and a website, the rat genome was among the first under the proverbial microscope, and one researcher, Baylor College's Richard Gibbs, estimated that rodent evolution was an order of magnitude

faster than human, although given that they only gestate for 21 or so days and produce new generations 92 times faster than you or me, maybe rats are going to be driving this ship soon. Who knows? Also, if you're trying to do the calculations on how big of a minivan a rat family would need, just know that in the span of one year, one happy rat couple can grow their family from just the two of them to 15,000, which means that every rat you see scuttling under a discarded

couch is probably somebody's great, great, great, great, great grandma, which is very sweet. Now, the whole time you've thought rats were like a 1996 Pontiac sunfire that smelled like bonk farts, but really rats are souped up flying DeLorean's that run on banana peels. And I bet they brag about it to each other. And so I have heard that they can communicate among themselves. I've seen videos where they laugh when they're tickled.

Do they have languages among themselves? How do they tell each other like, Hey, don't go down here. There's a big cat over there. Yes, it's fascinating that whole business of audible biology. And, you know, so they have these vocal sounds that they will use to communicate to each other. They'll clatter their teeth together, for example, for aggression. They will utter, you know, make these squeaks and sounds.

They will hiss. So they have these vocalizations that actually can be picked up and heard. They also have ultrasonic sounds that they make, that they communicate with. In fact, there's research and shows during mating, trying to attract a mate, for example, they will use ultrasonic songs and squeaks, you know, to try to attract the opposite sex for, you know, mating. Roden's getting hot and freaky.

Let's talk about it. So when a lady rat is DTMFDB down to make 15,000 babies, she'll hop and dart about. And her version of swiping right is what is called a lordosis response, which is similar to a good old fashioned twerk, just back arches, butt up, providing access to the business. And rather than make an o-face, the rats in the throes of their passion will make ultrasonic squeaks at around 50 kilohertz. And then the male will bellow a little lower to tell other lads,

please stay away, this one, this one loves me for a few minutes. Now, in early 2019, a team of researchers at Washington University's New Meyer Lab published a paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology about decoding ultrasonic rat chatter using neural networks, and it's called Deep Squeak, and soon we'll be able to learn all about the rat gossip. So there are more than meets the eye and the ear and also the nose. And after that, then they have another system

that is extremely cool, and that's pheromones. So, you know, rats and mice, they urinate, of course, a lot. And part of the reason they urinate a lot is because within that urine, there's pheromones and they'll defecate a lot. So research is shown like the rats in the city, as an example. Sometimes, you know, and you probably have seen it, I'm sure, you'll see some rat dropping someplace. And sometimes you'll find six or seven of those

droppings in the same spot. Well, that was deliberately done as a communication message for the colony that existed in that area, that something of a resource was located there, either food or shelter or water or something, because rats, again, good journal research has shown in those droppings of rats is pheromones that communicate to the colony members. So they speak to each other, not with words, but with chemicals. Oh, my gosh, we thought Twitter was advanced.

That's true. That's I love that their social media is just a small pile of poops. Like, did you see when he pooped? Oh, my God. Yes. And you know, it's funny, Allie, if you look at pictures taken, you know, National Geographic did this beautifully, you know, where they capture a family of rodents together doing something and you will see inevitably one or two of those rats smelling the droppings of their brothers or sisters

or parents, well, they communicate, they say, hey, what are they trying to tell me? Oh, my gosh. You know what, later today, FaceTime your mom or leave a nice comment on your cousin's Instagram and just be thankful that we have a different way of touching pace. And one of the most common that I just have to ask on behalf of all of us, when we hear the words urban rodentologist, we think rat king is a rat king, a real phenomenon.

Have you heard of this? Of course, yes. And I can appreciate that many people will ask you that question, thatologies. I've never seen one. OK. I've seen a artistic, I think it's a famous piece of art or a ceramic somebody somewhere back, I believe in the 1800s showed a group of rats all tangled up together

with their tails and they called that a rat king. Side note, the French call this gruesome, tangly occurrence, a roue de rats or a spinning wheel of rats as the knot would be the center and then the tails look like spokes, so wheel big trouble for rodents. And also it kind of looks like a plate of thick spaghetti that's rimmed in rats. It's horrifying. But a few preserved examples dating back hundreds of years are in museums. But are they a hoax?

Bobby smells a rat. And but I've never seen in the wild. There's no authentic scientific citation of such. But having said that, here's I would say it is possible that whoever started that business did witness it, because I have uncovered rat nests where all the rats are about the same age, kind of like teenage rats. And they're all huddled together in a nest and they had a sudden calamity of some sort that killed them all.

You know, either they all sadly got a rock or something up, moved on top of them. And they were all huddled together and their tails were at least intertwined. It doesn't mean they were tangled up, but they were intertwined. So I can see where someone may have seen discovered or maybe a group of rodents that froze to death below ground or something like this and all their tails were intertwined and assumed they wouldn't be able to get out of it. But they get out of that easily every single night when they go out to forage when they're a family. Oh, they sound so much cuter when there's a pile of them.

I don't know why. Like these they remind me of like when you're a kid and like your neighbor's dog had puppies, just that much a little teenage rat having a slumber party. Listen, they are cute and they make great pets. I'll just insert that right there for the record. They're wonderful, wonderful mammals. Have you had rats as pets? Yes, I have.

I've had different rodents here and there when I was especially when I was younger. And but I have to tell you there, you know, I had six brothers, two sisters, and I didn't go over well because they smell if you don't clean the bedding regularly and, you know, all of this. But but if you can do it, they make great pets. Oh, how precious is he? Also, if you're ready to make a rat, your best friend, consider getting a pair of BFFs as rats love to chill and kick it with their buds.

Now, there are so, so many varieties and subspecies of the brown rat, including the white rats that you think of when you're picturing like a research animal. But apparently mouse models are much more common in medical trials that involve our poor rodent friends, although all mammals descended from a common relative 80 million years ago. So our genomes and guts and organs pretty analogous. Now, what's the difference between a mouse and a rat? I know you want to know.

So rats, they're bigger, they're more cautious. And mice, they got pointy little noses, they're littler and they're more curious. But what if you only have evidence of them, i.e. their butt confetti to go by? Well, mice, smaller and pointier turds, rats are more blunt and larger. But roof rats or black rats are kind of in the middle of both. I hope this knowledge never comes in handy for you. And what about movies with rats?

Are there any that you feel they get it right? Like Ratatouille, the rats of Nim, any that you that you feel like they get rats, they did a good job? Well, since you mentioned Ratatouille, I would concur. I would actually say Ratatouille did get it right. No. They did great graphics. They really closely mimicked their body movements and their gestures.

So I was very impressed with Ratatouille. And I was also impressed with the message of Ratatouille, how we have to come up with better ways of coexisting on this planet than the way we're doing it right now. So and other movies, sadly for the rats, they tend to turn them into these horrible villains and these monsters that are waiting to attack you. And most of the movies have actually, sadly, given rats a bad name. What about myths about New York City rats that you would love to dispel?

Well, you know, the one I hear the most. And in fact, you probably seen the recent press about a certain restaurant and avocados and this kind of thing. And, you know, people turn them into, for example, that particular article, they weren't just rats. What were they? They were ginormous rats, right? Ginormous, what kind of a word, you know? But in New York City, the big myth is it seems like every headline editor

that writes a story about the rats has to outdo the other story in size. So they're gigantic, ginormous. They're super, they're huge, you know, monster size, but the fact of the matter is, Ali, the average rat is is not anything of great size. You know, I even have a bet out if anyone ever brings me a two pound rat, two pound Norway rat, I will write him a check for five hundred dollars. You know, it's never going to happen.

It's never going to happen. So the biggest myth is they don't get to be super rats or big giant ginormous rats. There's no such thing. That was one question that so many patrons asked. And so we got that out of the way. The rat story, I hear more than others when I'm out doing surveys, people say, what are you doing? I say, well, I'm surveying for rats and so forth.

And some some person was cut, you know, I heard there was a guy five years ago, he was a friend of a friend of a cousin's second brother. And he once went down into a sewer to check on something and he never came out again. You know, they never saw him again, but they saw all his bones and they think the rats ate him alive. That one I get all the time and they say with the most straight face is like, it's true, they keep saying it's true, it's true. But they never I say, what was the person's name?

Oh, I don't know. He's a friend of a friend of a friend. Oh, inside note, if you listen to last week's dendrology update with Casey, now you know why I left in his story about the guy falling into a pit of rats. But to be fair, just this past October, a chasm did open up on a Bronx sidewalk and plunged a man into a pit of rats. And many of us honestly probably didn't even hear about it or remember it because just 2020.

And I say, oh, very interesting. Well, that's fascinating. But, you know, it seems like we don't have too many funny stories about rats because we hate them so much or people love to hate them. Again, sadly, for the rats. Well, you know, you sometimes hear about if you die alone and you have a cat, your cat will sadly make a meal of you. But if you die in a big apartment, will the rats be like, well,

no one else is eating this? Would that happen to you? You know, mammals, right, including humans, as you probably know, if you die, you know, and I've slept in barns with rats, literally from my PhD. And so people say, well, what are you doing? Suppose they'll attack you and eat you and said, as long as there's other foods that they normally have that's dependable, they're not going to, they're not going to attack me and eat me.

And that's the same. However, of course, if they locked up that barn that I used to sleep in and we took away all the rats food and I was the only warm thing in there with muscle tissue, of course they're going to eat me. Same as humans have done in the course of history. Occasionally, there's been stories of human cannibalistic events. So that's what mammals do. That's good to know, I think.

Yes. And can I ask you questions from listeners? Sure. Oh, we have so many people are so excited. They're also excited about you in particular. People are like, oh, you got Bobby Corrigan. Oh, my God. So people are very excited. Gee, I know you're famous. Y'all a globally lauded rat expert answers your questions.

But first, a quick break to make a donation to the cause of the rodentologist choosing and this week, Dr. Bobby Corrigan directed it toward a personal cause, the Yash Gandhi Foundation, in honor of his nephew, Peter and his wife, Sarah Corrigan and their baby daughter, Adelaide, who suffers from a very rare inherited condition called mucolibidosis II, which is also known as eye cell disease. There's no treatment or cure right now. And the Yash Gandhi Foundation is a non-profit that directs 100 percent of donations to eye cell research.

And Peter and Sarah give little Adelaide a hug from us atologies. And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show, who you may hear about now, via words coming out of my rathole. OK, your questions. OK, so the following patrons, Eli J, RJ Deutsch, that's Good Gouda, Jason Miller, Zach Smollin, Julie Baird, Steve C, Megan Yance, all wanted to know how big are we talking? Well, Zachary Peterson said, my dad used to work a job in which he cleans sewers.

And apparently the rats in LA can get to the size of house cats. Is this a real thing or flim flam? But are rats in different parts of the country bigger than others? No, they're not. You know, there's only two species and I've been in LA a lot. So I've done rat surveys in LA and out your way in LA. There's roof rats, the black rat is also called and the noy rat, the brown rat. So here in New York City, we only have the brown rat.

So but in LA, the rats of the sewers, both species will use the sewers in LA. What he will notice is when you are in a sewer and haven't been down there and it's the lights not great and you get close to a rat in a sewer by mistake, which I've done many, many times. The rats frightened. So what does the rat do? Ally, when it's frightened, it does what it's like if you have cats or you know cats,

they raise the hackles, right? And so the rats I saw when I first went to, I would say the same thing. I'd come out there and like, oh, my God, I saw a rat today. There was biggest an alley cat. Yeah, because the rat was like, whoa, is a predator standing right next to me. Try to look big and scary, which they did. Success.

Somewhere right now, there's a bear in Yellowstone telling its friends that it saw an eight foot tall puffy human that spit spicy venom in its face. And all the bears are like, what? But that's that little trick, isn't it? Is like try to make yourself look big and like a lot of handling time for the predator, you know, and predators make decisions on that. They'll say, look, you know what?

That's that's too big a fight for me to have a meal. So I'll look for something easier to handle. Oh, they're all fluff. They're just scared, frightened fluff. That's a good way to put it. They are, they're fluff. And you know, we were talking about Southern California rats and Patron Teresa DeZazo, who is a first time question asked her,

since living in Southern California, we have these critters called tree rats or roof rats, and they hunker down in car engines over the winter months and they chew wires and fluid lines. And what can you do to dissuade them from using undercarriages? And I actually had this problem myself. I had a Prius and I heard that they would lubricate the wire harnesses with peanut oil and that they would love to get in there. But yeah, we cracked open my hood and found like an orange and some snails.

How do you dissuade them from living in your car? You know, it's, it's a real problem, to be honest with you. I have a barn and I have a tractor in that barn and it has wires. And I'm going to, you know, I have this farm in addition to where I am. And same thing. So I get it. And the roof rats of California love to get into those cars for sure. They go up by the wheel base.

They climb on top of the air filter and they will bring food in there. They'll eat in there and they will nor on the wires regularly. So there's no product, for example, that you can buy that's going to really dissuade them from doing that. However, now I tell everybody, look, do the best you can, especially if you have a garage, it's not difficult to road improve your garage. It's pretty darn simple to do that. So keep them out.

Don't store any food in that garage. It's going to bring them in there. So where they want to get up underneath that hood. And finally, if you can, if for whatever reason, and there are cases where there's lots of rats, lots of mice that start visiting the garages or the car ports, is if you can, if you just leave your hood open at night, propped open, it usually discourages them from doing that completely. If that's even the worst thing there, then sometimes you can just you can put out

little bags of mothballs and pick them up every day, put them back out at them. It's annoying. It's we all like to get into a car and drive away. But if you were living in an area where there's rodents and they're bothering your car, you just got to go those few extra steps. I thought you might appreciate that El Hoffman says that when I lived in Queens, I'd take my car to the shop and they found a rat's nest with chewed wires and five whole empanadas in the engine.

They sent pictures. And I just wanted to tell you that he's like, that's a hall, man. I don't even know. That is excellent. Thanks, Hoffman, for sharing that. That's very cool. Five a whole empanada. That's like, that seems like that would last a week.

That's like going to Costco for a rat. It's amazing. You must have thinking, I'm not going to be able to get out for a couple of days. I better go grocery shopping. OK, math break. How long would five empanadas last one rat calories wise? OK, so apparently one city rat needs an ounce of food or 28 grams a day to survive. And I know 28 grams of food can very greatly in caloric density and water content.

But let's just say a single rat living in your Nissan needs 28 grams of empanadas a day to survive. So I looked it up. The average empanada, all that glorious pastry and cheesy meaty feeling weighs in at around 89 grams, meaning that the rat in the car was stocked up for two fortnights or a full moon cycle of munching. Indeed, it's just like high tailing it to Costco. Plus the world is your free sample.

Now, speaking of tails, by the way, patrons Diana Burgess and Heidi Wright had some questions as well as Amelia Hunter wants to know why are rat tails hairless? You know, some of the different species of rats have quite a bit of fur on them, depending on the species. And with the commensal rodents, the city rodents, the ones domestic by us over time, you know, having a coat of fur over that tail is not advantageous because in city areas and you're going through sewers, you're going through garbage, you're going through dirty areas.

And if you have a lot of fur on that tail, you can imagine what's going to happen. You're going to have junk throughout that thing. You're going to have things stuck to it. You're going to have all kinds of stuff that you're constantly going to have to clean off. So over time, the rodents, you know, for these burrowing activities and being involved with areas with lots of stuff in the ground, no doubt just evolved to having no fur, not much hair. But, you know, they do have sparse hairs on that tail, but it's called a scaly tail.

For them, for that particular species and for the millennia of their life, they just evolved to that species not having a lot of fur to get catching things. Imagine like keeping your hair long and loose when you work in an open concept taffy factory, just know, buzz it. Also, speaking of sticky situations, though rat kings are debated as flimflam, there's a lot of photographic evidence on squirrel kings. Yes, their bushy, luxurious tails can catch sap in a nest.

And then before you know it, a bunch of juveniles are joined at the tangly butts. And it's the saddest animal video I've ever maybe ever seen, but they have been able to take them into vets and sedate them and buds cut them. But yes, squirrel kings, they are a thing. And I'm sorry, I have broken your heart. Let's change the subject to giant prehistoric Amazonian rainforest rats that lived 10 million years ago and weighed as much as an uncle, 175 pounds. But they had just teeny tiny four ounce brains, kind of like its modern cousin,

the gym rat. I kid, I don't know how to count macros or lift things. So jokes on me. Now, this hulking rodent beast we're talking about 10 million years ago was a marvel. But before you rent a time machine to check it out, please know that here still sauntering on earth, the largest rodent of unusual size is the capybara. And they don't eff around. They weigh up to 150 pounds of ripped rodent.

And now, OK, I know this episode is about ratus ratus, black or the roof rat and the poorly named Norwegian or brown rat that has become the dominant city species. But let's not forget that we still need episodes on the other 2000 or so species of rodents like porcupines and beaver, sentient chillas and squirrels, who once again, squirrels still have that posterior mane unlike their sleek city cousins. And I imagine, though, if they've kept the length on the scaly tail,

it must serve a purpose in terms of like a sensory type of organ or for balance. Like, what are they using that tail for? Because it's so long. I know, I know, but it serves them well, Ali. You know, that, you know, if you look at, say, the the roof rats of California, you know, they are experts at negotiating lines and wires and anything, you know, twigs and tree branches, you know, because that particular rat evolved from around Vietnam, where it's going up and down the forest jungle of vines and trees

and this kind of thing. So if you watch them do it, you will see they take that tail, that long tail, and they wrap it around whatever they're climbing on. So it gives them this stability for a very thin, you know, doing a tight rope act. So the tail really serves all three species of their urban rodents very well in helping them when they need it to balance on very narrow services and wires and so forth. And the other thing the tail does that a lot of people may not realize is it's a thermal regulator.

So, you know, when when these are small mammals, they have a very high surface volume to low body mass and, you know, on hot days, for example, these mammals can help regulate their body temperature by keeping the tail away from the body and it's a large surface volume. So it dissipates the body heat. And on, you know, at least for those of us in the east coast here in temperate areas, when it's cold, they'll take that tail and they'll put it below their body and sit on it, so to speak, so they don't lose that heat through the tail.

So it's a thermal regulating organ as much as its balance. And it gives them sometimes they need to stand up on their hornches and they'll plant that tail out and it gives them an anchor from which to stand up without, you know, losing their balance and falling over. Oh, I think it's I think it's start must startle humans because it just looks like such a long finger. Yes. And the other thing you, you know, you're

alluding to to some degree and since your allergies, you probably have done this. But a lot of the reasons we don't like this mammal or people are fearful of it or they're they were disgust of it is the other sadly animal we love to hate on the planet earth are snakes. And and so a lot of people say, oh, the tail grosses me out. It's like they have a snake behind them. I'm like, oh, my goodness, the rats can't win. That's so true.

It must just strike something where it's like there's a snake made out of human skin attached to its butt and we just like a finger a finger snake on its butt. Oh, we have so many good questions. I was going through this list. I was just like, how am I going to pair this down? Jessica Flowers is a first time question asker and says, I've heard that rats have extremely strong teeth. What causes them to be so strong?

And someone else asked about their bite strength comparing to crocodiles. Do they have really strong jaws? They do, you know. And that's a great question. You know, the rodent, the word rodent, Ali means to gnaw, G-N-A-W, which is different, by the way, is chewing. People say they chew on things. Well, you know, scientifically, gnawing is one thing, chewing is another.

OK, what's the difference? So to gnaw is to bite and to chew is to crush with boulders. Also, I didn't know where to mention this in this episode, but I read that rats can get through any hole the size of their heads because their ribs can collapse when they squeeze through things and then just spring back up on the other side. Anyway, back to their mouths. So Jessica Flowers, first time question asker, you are about to hear exactly how strong rat teeth are.

It's my gift to you. So to gnaw on things, they're tools. So they they have these powerful incisors, upper and lower incisors, that have no roots, so they keep growing because they need them to gnaw into tree trunks and to get a rock out of the way or to, you know, climb. They will actually climb up a rock wall with using their teeth like when we do rock climbing with picks and axes. So they're very, very strong.

As the questioner asked, they've been measured exerting pressures seven thousand pounds per square inch of pressure, which is tremendous. And I've been bitten once where they in a sewer where they got hold of my fingers. I thought my hand was in a vice that someone was tightening. So it's extremely powerful. By contrast, a crocodile's weenie limp bite force is thirty seven hundred PSI and gummy adult lions can only bite at six hundred and fifty PSI. So what's a human's bite force?

You wonder one hundred and twenty six. So we suck, we you suck, we both suck. We are the lampries of the mammal world. And we know this because there exists something called a Nathodinometer, which is a device used to measure bite force. So yes, first time question asker Zoe Crankshaw, who has a rat living on their high rise balcony. It did sort of climb up the walls like a tiny spider man, but with its face.

They don't even need radioactive material to give them superpowers. They just have evolution and empanadas. You know, they bite at six bites per second. So very fast, very fast. And so that the whole thing of when someone says rodent, what do people think about those two prominent teeth when the camera takes a picture from the front side of this animal, those big, powerful incisors, uppers and low is just jutting out at you.

You know, and that can really get your attention up really fast. Do you ever have to worry about anything communicable? We have a lot of different listeners and I will say their names in an aside. So patrons who asked about ratty infections were many, specifically Ashley Emmanuel, Dominic Lee, Alina Leighton, big Dr. Corrigan fan, Derek Allen, Julie Baer, Maria Jiravleva, Alicia Penny, Kendra Sinclair, Forrest Stotz, who also referred to rat's nests as massive cuddle puddles and patrons who were plagued with questions about a specific disease.

Ryan Clark, Earl of Grammellkin, Bear Hodge, 22, and Heidi Wright, who wrote, has anyone asked about the plague yet? Oh, yes. Who asked about plague and hantavirus? Anything out there right now that people would be concerned about or is that something of the past? Well, another great question. You know, rodents in general hang out in these dirty places, right?

Sewers, garbage, rotting, squalor. They run through the curbs and they're they they're always involved with scavenging on all kinds of things. So any animal like that, that lives in the wild and occupies and visits, you know, filth and dirt, you know, that's where our bacteria and grow. That's where dangerous pathogens of different sorts are going to be found, if you will. So. The problem is with rats in cities,

no matter even if you are a millionaire and living a beautiful millionaire home and this kind of thing, you're only as good as whether or not that garage door is road-improved because you can have a rat come out of the sewer right outside that estate and squeeze below a garage door and now trample all over your your kitchen. So they have the potential to transmit viruses. We all know about COVID, of course. Well, rats themselves have been found to carry novel viruses of all different sorts, including corona viruses.

But good news is not this corona virus. Oh, yeah, that's the good news. So far we haven't found this research going on right now, by the way. But they do carry other diseases, you know, foodborne illnesses as a major disease where we've all been there where you maybe eat something someday and you're sick for two days and you're vomiting and diarrhea, those are usually caused by foodborne illness bacteria like salmonella, to give an example.

They also, you know, they carry a disease called leptospirosis, which we lost two people in New York City three years ago from ratborne leptospirosis. So they're public health pests. There's no doubt about that. They're public health pests in Los Angeles. You probably know just two years ago there's a typhus outbreak in downtown Los Angeles and I was out there looking at that situation. And so, you know, that's associated with rats.

What is leptopirosis? Well, I asked the Google and it's a bacterial infection of the blood and it's contracted from pee. Also, dogs can get it. There's also typhus outbreaks, equally no good. But wait, wait, wait, don't you give up on rats? Because they may not have even been to blame for plagues. Historians in the last few years are starting to look at disease models that point the finger to human lice and human fleas.

So rats, it is we who have done you dirty. The point is we need to keep in perspective. But there's two diseases we do not have to worry about with rats. One is plague. Oh, OK. Even though they are associated with historically with the plague of the medieval times, that's not going to happen anymore these days.

And the other one is rabies. Everyone asks me if they get bit by a mouse or a rat, should they get rabies treatments? And the answer is no, you would never get rabies treatments for being bitten by any of the rats in the United States. They just do not align themselves with that particular virus. I don't know her. So but but other than that, this about 55, 56 diseases, other diseases, that you just don't want to play disease lottery with these animals.

Right. So keep them out of your buildings and keep your garbage clean and you want to have to worry about it. Jessica Fritz and Jesse Dragon both want to know what are your thoughts on the use of rodents as landmine sniffers, like the hero rats? Well, see, and that's a different species. You know, that's the Gambian pouched rat. That's a very cool, very cool rodent, as we all know, because for the landmine

work, it's incredible what they do. And there's a great example of the utility of using the rodents to help us in dramatic ways. So I think it's a world of research, Ali, still waiting there as to the things we can use rodents for, but have not thought about doing. So the Gambian pouched rat, the hero rat, is an example of like, look, take that principle and maybe we can take city rats as an example. And maybe we would be able to put them to work with some practical job and

make them work for us to some degree and it would at least change the paradigm of they're all bad, they're all evil, they're all dangerous. But we haven't we haven't began to really test that animal in terms of its utility, but it has great potential, in my opinion. Yeah, they really deserve so much respect for being such generalists and so adaptable and just being smart enough to survive. I always feel this way about anyone who lives in New York anyway. I'm like, if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.

Same with the rats, it's not an easy city to live in. And it's like, if you can hack it there, respect, you know. Yeah, it may be right. It'd be interesting to see who can suffer that more, LA rats or New York City rats. I know. Although there is a lot of pressure on LA rats to make their tails look thinner with contour and, you know, whisker extensions, it's brutal out here, man. And, you know, El Hoffman had another question.

First time question, ask her again. And as a New Yorker, I've heard that the rats in the subway are actually the alpha rats because it's the best place to live. And the sidewalk rats are the weaker rats that can't cut it in the subway. Is there any truth to this? Well, here's the thing, it's actually the opposite. Oh, really? Yes, the subway, there are rats in the subway,

but and we did a four year study of the rats in the subway, by the way. And I can tell you that the subway is not a preferred habitat for the rats. Really? Really, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Even though you're down below ground and the tunnels are dark and everything, it's it's an environment that is difficult for a rat to find good nesting areas. The food isn't constantly abundant, unless there's a really dirty subway. And in the past, there might have been.

But these days, they have sweeper trains and they have advanced garbage collection processes and the trains come by every two minutes. You got to scurry away and so forth. So the subways, they are there everywhere, but it's not a preferred habitat. And the ones below the sidewalks upstairs, if you will, if they have the right sidewalk and they found a small hole from which they can duck down into and come out at night and get to the garbage that's right on the curb. It's a much easier lifestyle.

Do they have to kind of fight for those different habitats or is it like you were born into a nest that was above ground lucky you? Well, yes, it's it's just like us, right? So the best real estate is usually a very well protected nest close by good food that's very dependable night after night. So once that's located and the rats start reproducing and once they start reproducing and they say, look, food is always here and it's close by to the bed and the bed is well protected, we are going to defend this to the end.

That's the way it goes is real estate, real estate, real estate. I love the idea that it's just like location, location, location. Sure is. And I love this question. Alex Ly, Rachel Noble, Ira Gray, Bennett Gerber, a bunch of people wanted to know, essentially, has anyone ever done a study on different city subway rats to see if they've developed regional food preferences? Asked Rachel Noble, Ira Gray says, is it true that rats in different cities have

different junk food preferences? Like when you bait traps, you have to use different foods depending on the region. Is that true? It is true. No, yes, it is. And in fact, some really great scientists out of Fordham University here, an urban ecology scientist, they did some studies and others as well where, you know, if you go up, let's just say, and for 20 years,

your colonies have been forging whatever. And let's just say we'll pick any ethnicity you wish. So rats, as it turned out, sleep just 100 to 200 feet away from their food source. Their commute is nothing. And in their whole life, they rarely travel more than 600 feet from their birth place. Homebodies, cozy. So let's say you're a rat growing up near really good dim sum and your mom's milk is like tastes like dim sum.

It's your favorite, dude. Let's say you go five miles uptown and all of a sudden you're in a European neighborhood where it's European style foods or whatever it may be, whether it's marinara sauce, it's a spaghetti, a meatballs. Try it, French spaghetti day. So, you know, cities will have things that we some people will say this, right? We joked earlier, oh, New York City is the best pizza. Well, what is, you know, what's the food favorites of LA or St. Louis or Chicago?

And those rodents that have spent 40, 50 years in those areas, yes, they're probably going to have those food dialects established within their biology. Oh, and how long does a city rat live, by the way? I forgot to ask that. Most on the average conditions, Ali, they're lucky if they get a full year. They're very lucky if they get a year. Most live nine months, 10 months.

Occasionally, you know, just like us occasionally, you'll find people bring me these rats that look like, oh, my goodness, they've been through a war. They look like shit. Some of the dominance will get a year and a half, two years. But it's a hard life to be a wild rat. Yeah, it's a hard life. You know, it's hard, it's breakups. And a lot of you wanted relationship advice from Bobby, including Jacqueline

Henevan, Jamie Jensen, Daniel Saldana, Paul Cerilio, Urikatz, Julia Zephyropoulos, who's a first time question asker, Jess Swan, Alana Uel, Elizabeth Edwards, Nicole Halley, Hilary Larson, Rare Press, Joyce Sanchez, Melanie Lee, Jaden Auburn, who says, I saw a rat dying from chemicals and I wanted to cuddle it because it looked so sad and sick. PS, I did not cuddle the dying rat. Well done, Shaden. And patron Dillamon Gweyer, who asked, how do you exterminate or trap rodents

on an industrial scale? Hand grenades? Flamethrowers? So a lot of trapping and humane based inquiries, naturally. And I feel like one question that is on so many listeners' minds is how do you feel about mousetraps, ask Hilary Larson, Rare Press says, what's the most humane way to trap and remove a house mouse? So many people say they respect them, but they don't want them. Say, for example, so many people asked, toilet rats, is it possible that a rodent can get in your house via the toilet?

Essentially, what can you do if you don't want the rat in your house? What's the best way to get rid of it? Yes, so I would say because that question touches upon the being it's back to the ratatouille, I believe we need to be humane with these animals, even though, you know, they can care disease, they can hurt us, they can burn our buildings down by knowing why. Nevertheless, we're smart enough to do this so that we don't have to resort to traps that capture them by the legs or by the head. And some of these barbaric means and this kind of thing.

So the best way to be humane to this animal and also control it so it doesn't get close to you is if they're trying to get into your house, either through a toilet bowl or through the doors or through a hole in this kind of thing, it's because they want to get to either harbourage or food. The toilet bowl thing is it's not rare, but it's not that common. So it's if a rat was to come up through the tolls, which they do occasionally, that's something the city needs to be told. They need to inspect their sewer lines and take care of that, which they can.

But every person that may be involved inologies here in question answer is it is not difficult to do your garbage correctly. It is not difficult to keep your doors well sealed and close to the floor. It's not difficult just to not attract them to your property in the first place. So then you have to do something like trap them or poison them. And hopefully you don't have a neighbor who is just surrounded and take out containers. There's the rub, isn't it? We're only as good as the worst neighbor on our block, aren't we?

Which I think in an urban environment, that you just kind of don't know what's going on behind the wall next to you. And someone who lived in a duplex that had cockroaches turns out a neighbor below us. Ah, yes. Just as the cream rises to the top, so do roaches and rats. The second floor. This also was the same duplex in LA where our furnace blew out so much carbon monoxide that when it also caught fire, the repair person told us in earnest that

my roommates and I should have a party to celebrate that we did not die from it. The landlord, who is a heinous, toilet-hearted, garbage person, also tried to keep our security deposit because the house had termites. Go figure. But speaking of toilet people, let's get back to a great question, which was asked by myself and patrons. Courtney R. Catherine Gal Passaro, Megan Walker and Emily H. This is one question I've always wanted to know. Toilet rats, how are they holding their breath to get through the actual toilet?

You know, rats are great swimmers. In fact, outstanding swimmers. And so getting up the toilet from from the sewer and going against the current, so to speak, is no problem. They can hold their breath for three, three and a half minutes. Oh, my God. Yes. And they, that tail helps them. I watch rats fish in the Hudson River, literally jump in the river, fish around,

swim, capture little fishes and come back up and eat them on the rocks. There was a seafood buffet you wouldn't believe. So so they get up that toilet. It's not difficult whatsoever. They can they can stay afloat. The research I've seen on this was, you know, you can put a rat in a big tub with nothing to rest on and they will be able to stay like that for three days of treading water.

So they're great swimmers. And I imagine Pizza Rat must have been a thrilling triumph for for rats and rodentologists everywhere. But what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen a rat eating? Well, you know, they eat everything. But for me, you know, the Pizza Rat thing didn't surprise me all that much, even though it's cool and it has a cool stick to it, right? Pizza Rat, it just sounds cool.

But I've watched the rat run down like Fifth Avenue one night years ago. And in New York, I don't know if it is in LA, but we have these giant pretzels you can buy from the pretzel guy. I mean, they're as big as, you know, they're the huge things. We usually break them up and tear them apart. We eat them in pieces. But here's this rat running down Fifth Avenue with a whole pretzel. He's bumping into things.

He was hitting the walls. He was hitting, you know, the garbage cans with it. He just wanted to get it home. So I was like, somebody should do pretzel rat. It's much, it's much better. Oh, I'm so happy for that rat. What a score. Imagine, imagine if you had a calzone as big as you just like running

through the streets with it. Now, the question is, did he go back for the mustard thing? That's the question. Salts or no salts? Yeah, exactly. Salts or no salts. It's amazing. I mean, in all of your work, being a rodentologist, sleeping in barns to get your PhD,

there must be something that is tough about it. What's the hardest thing about being an urban rodentologist? Well, no, as much as I'm hired to design programs to manage these rats and cities, the hardest part is, you know, is the rats a problem only because we as a species, we're supposed to be the smartest thing in this planet. I always tell people our name is Homo sapiens, right? But how sapient are we? Here we allow our refuse to get away from us and we plastic the ocean up and all

these kinds of things. And so the saddest part for me, the hardest part of my job is I'm constantly looking at situations, Ali, where they say, yeah, we have a lot of rats in this part of the city. And for me, I'm like, what's sad is we are the reason for this city having a lot of rats, not the rats. You know, they're just doing what they need to do. So it's this constant sometimes downer to see like, oh, my God, we should behave much better than we're doing, you know, and we wouldn't have to then go after this

rat with these horrible poisons and stuff. The rat's super cool and on its own. If I'm in the woods and it's not disturbing anybody and I see a rat living in the wild, I'm like, bravo, bravo, you're a great, great species. Bravo, rats. We've got to hand it to you. What about your favorite thing about rats? I know that's so hard because they're so cool and they have hands. I mean, they're tiny little mammals with hands.

Like, where do you start? I know, I know. I think the coolest thing that I love about the animals is, you know, and it is back to my barns where I learned this, you know, when I stayed in there with these rats and night after night, just taking notes and watching them and laying on the floor and this kind of thing, you know, they are very, very much like us. And we already know that since we gained so much from their medical research. But, you know, I was able to watch rats be kind to each other.

I watched rats bring each other, you know, gifts of food and just drop it there and walk away, which I said, that had to be kind of a fluke. They couldn't have done that on purpose. Well, now we know they do. They have altruism, they give to each other, you know, they have bad moods. Like you mentioned earlier, they laugh, they tickle, they have joy. So the best part is, you know, you know, they're very super cool mammals. And look how successful they are.

You wouldn't be that successful unless you were great at what you do, right? Great at what you do. So you probably take a lot of pride in your work withologies. I take pride in my work as rotatologists. We try to be good at what we do. Well, the rats like, yep, been there, done that. You just maybe start crying, thinking of them, giving each other presents. It's so cute.

Yes, so nice. They're just trying to live. That's right. Oh, my goodness. And, you know, a lot of people are saying, also, there's a ratatouille musical that they're trying to make on TikTok. And Sarah Hunt wants to know, would you ever be interested in being a science consultant for rodent themed entertainment? You bet. Sign me up.

That sounds fabulous. You've got to get you a TikTok account. Are you on there yet? I am not. I'm embarrassed to say I'm not on there. You neither. If I figure out TikTok, I will let you know how it works. Thank you. I need the help, believe me.

Thank you, Ali. Again, it was very cool. When I saw allergies for the first time on Twitter, I said, how cool is this? You know, so I followed it a half a second. I was just following you. Well, I mean, you also, like, you have the handle, rodentologists, like, it's so amazing. Yeah, people say, is there really such a thing?

I said, I hope so. I am one. It's so great. Oh, my God. So ask knowledgeable experts, squeaky questions, because life is short. We're all going to die and rats are smart. And the answers might just make you weep in front of a stranger. So you can find Dr. Robert Corrigan, a.k.a.

please just call me Bobby on Twitter at rodentologist. He has the handle. Remember, I will link to his handle as well as the charity and the sponsors will be linked in the show notes. I'm Ali Ward with just one L on Twitter and on Instagram. Do say hi and follow there. And oligies is at oligies on both. You can become a patron of the show for a teeny, tiny little dollar a month and

submit questions. That's patreon.com slash oligies. Oligies Merch, including face masks, are available at oligiesmerch.com. And that's managed by Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch, two sisters who host You Are That, which is a comedy podcast. And they recently had the Doctor's Aaron on from the epidemiology episode and from this podcast will kill you. So check out You Are That. Thank you, Aaron Talbert, for admitting the oligies podcast Facebook group so

beautifully. Thank you, Emily White and the big group of transcribers for making transcripts available for free. The link to them is in the show notes. There are also bleeped episodes available for free at that link. Thank you, Caleb Patton, for doing the bleeping. Thank you, Noel Dilworth, for lining up the interviews and being like my second brain and to assistant editor, Jared Sleeper, who is no longer my boyfriend, but we will address that in the secret at the end of the show.

And thank you, of course, to Stephen Ray Morris, who puts the show together every week. He also hosts The Percast and See Jurassic Right, two podcasts about cats and dinos, respectively. And Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and he's in a band called Island, a very good band. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, you know, I share a secret and I'm getting nervous. I've been sitting on this news for several weeks because of the holidays and then, you know, just a little bit of chaos in Washington.

It just didn't seem to be like a good time to go public. But Jared Sleeper and I have been really enamored of each other for almost a decade, but he is no longer my boyfriend. He is my fiance. I have sweaty palms telling you. So yes, we did not break up. We're in gadget. So that's right, the man who wears wigs and short shorts to make quarantine

workout videos and who is an excellent cook and poet and friend and an ally for justice, just my ride or die. And that will have some goober done. Give me a special jam. And I am very, very lucky to have found him. Your Harry Pod mom or step mom or I don't know. We'll figure that out. Go enjoy a snack in your preferred food dialect.

I don't know, cupcakes, texture crush. You never know what might happen. We'll accept it. We'll all die and then our molecules can turn into frogs or a cactus. And that's cool too. OK, love y'all. Bye bye.