Search Engine - Why are there so many chicken bones on the street? (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

This week, the shocking finale of our investigation into who -- or what -- has been leaving chicken bones strewn across the sidewalks of American cities. Our team of investigators returns with surveillance footage, and a recording of a superintendent with a rat-hitting stick. Plus, an exclusive interview with a public servant with a vision for a revolution in American urban trash collection. Check out Manny, Noah, and Devan online. And if you'd like to support Search Engine, you can sign up for our newsletter here. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vote. Each week, we try to answer a question we have about the world. No question too big. No question too small. This week, part two of our expose. Why are there so many chicken bones on the street? That's after some ads. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Serval AI.

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Thank you. Do you guys mind just reintroducing yourselves? Sure thing. My name is Manny. Last time I was talking about the changes in my neighborhood that I thought was leading to chicken bones ending up on the streets. Yes. I'm Noah.

I did lots of research on the history of chickens and why we eat them now. And I'm Devin. Looked into what animals may be a culprit for chicken bones. All the things that aren't. There's a long list. Okay. So what have you guys tell me of your experiment? So since our last conversation, we decided to go.

go with the GoPro option, which is literally just buying chicken wings and dropping them in front of a camera and seeing what happens. But we decided to run this experiment by a rat expert. Yeah. You know, all three of us interviewed him. Naturally. But, you know, I'm the animal guy, so I took the lead. The Wrangler. Yeah, the Rangler. So this guy, he's a scientist. He studied his biology really focuses on rats living in urban areas. Okay.

And he's actually gotten federal funding to study this. You just introduced yourself and tell us a bit about what you do. Yeah, sure. I'm Jason Muncie South. I'm a professor of biology at Fordham University. I've been there since 2013. Before that, I was a professor at Keone in New York City. And I have a long-running interest in how animals adapt and thrive in urban areas.

So Jason studies like all kinds of urban animals. But he said when he moved to New York for work, like, everyone just kept asking him about rats? Yeah. So he figured, like, okay, maybe I should just focus on them. I decided, you know, why don't we try to understand something about how rats are living in New York City? How are they moving around? You know, there's all this kind of, like, folk wisdom about how rats use the city. You know, they're moving through sewers and subway tunnels and that sort of thing.

But there hadn't really been much effort by scientists to actually figure out if that's what they do. So we wanted to get Jason's... advice on our experiment as a rat expert. But first, we just wanted to make sure we had like a basic understanding of like rats. So he gave us a couple of things, some information that we want to share a few. First of all, the rat that we see in New York City. It is not an American rat. In New York City, we're talking about the brown rat or the Norway rat.

It's not actually from Norway originally. I don't really know why it has that name. They originated in East Asia, probably in, you know, northern China. China along waterways in grassy areas. And then as humans develop agriculture in that part of the world, they became accustomed to living around people and feeding on cultivated grain. And then they spread throughout China into Southeast Asia and then followed coastal routes along India, up into the Middle East, North Africa. In Europe, we don't know exactly when, but, you know, several hundred years ago. Not as long as you'd think, actually, for this species. Maybe like the

1500s they get to Europe. And then by the 1700s, they've been moved, you know, all over the world by European empires, mostly, because they're quite able to survive long ship voyages once they get on the ship. So they just follow, it's basically like they're much more recent than I would have realized, and they just follow trade. Like, they just follow human trade. Yeah, you know, because we have, we're really nice to the rats.

We leave them lots of goodies. And another thing he told us, that we thought was super interesting, is that he thinks the number of rats in New York is, like, way lower than the estimates that are out there. A lot of estimates we found were saying that there were two to three million rats in the city, but Jason said it's actually, like, really hard

to figure out exactly how many rats there are with, like, a good amount of certainty. And in his professional opinion, the number of rats in the city is probably closer to, like, a few hundred thousand. Oh, yeah, my assumption, would be that they outnumber us. But it sounds like Jason thinks they don't even remotely outnumber us.

Yeah, he said if there are that many rats, like we'd basically be just tripping over rats. Okay. Okay. I didn't think that I would feel relief. That's great. Okay. So what else did you guys learn from him?

Yeah, so we wanted to present to him our hypothesis and also some of our who we thought the culprits were. Yeah. And I remember last time we had this conversation, it was kind of silly us going through the list until we got to rats. But he actually confirmed to us that there are, like, squirrels, for example, raccoons. Like, those animals are probably likely also experimenting with chicken bones in the city. Experimenting with chicken bones.

Chicken bones are a gateway drug to other human foods. Okay, so, you know, so Jason here, he is a rat expert. and he did actually think our theory was pretty plausible. And once again, the theory that there's a sizable percentage of the chicken bones on the street are a result of rats. Let me just actually play you what he said. Yeah. I think it's a good hypothesis. So in my adult life, I have lived for some span of time in Chicago, D.C. and New York, and now I live in Stanford, Connecticut.

every single one of those cities has had an unusually large number of chicken bones on the street. I'd say Stanford has the least and also has the least rats of those three. But Chicago, D.C. and New York are all big rat cities and all big chicken bone cities. And I've actually thought about this myself going back years. And I've heard the same thing from friends that own dogs over and over again, that they're constantly pulling chicken bones out of their dog's mouths. By the end of our conversation with Jason, we were gathering so many insightful, nuanced facts

that I was like, oh, no, we're about to drop the dumbest proposal, which is just to put a camera up and see what happens. But to our surprise, he was like, yeah, that's exactly what you should do. Oh, really? He was like, that's probably the best way to observe this. He gave us a couple of pointers, so we originally just were going to put chicken wings in a bag and throw them out there and record it with a GoPro.

But he gave us a few tips on making it a little bit more realistic. of an experiment. The first tip was that we should put other trash into the trash bag with the chicken bones. The second tip was to put it in a place that's like familiar for the rats. And then the third was that if we were successful in finding that rats took and ate our chicken bones

to check the bones for little rat bite marks. So if you want to pick it up and look at it, which is not a desire I've ever had, You would actually see many teeth marks. That's right. Yeah. Disgusting. So one evening, after we talked to the rat expert,

we procured the GoPro cameras to set up our little experiment. I took one of the cameras. I think it was around 6 p.m. and I went outside of my apartment. I'm kind of, you know, looking around. Like, I don't want to be setting this up while people are walking by. So I'm doing some double takes. I look very suspicious at this point.

And then I put my bag of chicken under a trash can, and then I put my camera under the trash can behind it, just so that no one could even see it while they walk by. Yeah. And on my way inside, I cross paths with my super who's on his way out. I'm like, okay, I mean, this is bad timing, but we're going to be fine. He's not going to see anything. The fear was that he would...

What was the fear? My fear was that he would just see my setup and be like, what the hell is this rightfully? Yes. and then take it away. Oh, you'd just be like, man, he's filming the trash can for some reason. Yeah. He doesn't have permission to do that.

Yeah, in my head, there's a million things like, this guy's trying to catch me doing something. Right. The setup doesn't necessarily look like it's filming the trash. Yeah, and usually, like, in a city or anywhere, when you are in a place and you just see a camera, you're like, someone's trying to tell me not to do something. You don't think someone's trying to study rats.

So I get up to my apartment. I live on the fourth floor, and right outside of my window, I can look down into the trash can area. Yeah, beautiful. And when I do that, he found myself. Oh, no. So what was happening? So he's picking up the bag.

He's looking at the bottom of it. He's looking around to see, like, well, who left this there? Because, like, to be fair, like, it's trash that is on the ground next to a trash can. So I talked to Demina Noah. They're like, sorry, but you got to go talk to this guy. and I go downstairs while he's still kind of fidgeting with the stuff and I decided to record the conversation.

You recorded the conversation? I was shorted the conversation. I think we should play the recording. I would love to hear the recording. It's a weird question, but I think you might have found my camera. In the trash? No. Oh.

You lost the camera? No, I set one up to... This is so weird, but I worked for NBC and I'm doing a project about rather rats like chicken bones. Oh, good. So I said... It really highlights that, like, There's certain things that if you're doing them as part of your job, it's basically fine.

And if you're doing it as a person, it's like so much stranger. Yeah. Like, I was like, I just needed to know this. I can't remember a more like humiliating, like, experience than trying to describe this study to my super. I didn't want, I didn't want you to think I was doing anything crazy. They come to this garbage game, the rats? This is why I have that stick here. So hit them.

Oh. Oh. That stick is for hitting the rest. That's crazy. He's got a rat hitting stick? I've seen this stick every day. I didn't know what it was for. It's the rat stick.

It's to hit the rats. Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that. Yeah, it's for a podcast. Okay. I work for NEC, but we're doing a podcast for this podcast called Search Engine. It's pretty popular.

I can send you the link when it's done. Yeah, yeah, sure. Do that. Yeah. That's cool. Thank you. I'm going to get some more wings. So why did you have to get more wings, man?

He threw my first wings away. By the time I got back, like, when I'm in my apartment looking down, he's, like, you know, inspecting the wings. Why? Yeah. It just looked weird. By the time I got down there, he threw them away, and it took them to the garbage in the sidewalk. And so I go to get more wings. Yeah. I put them back in front of the camera, which is still recording.

And my super is still out there. Yeah. And he mentions that, actually, I missed my window. The rats had come in the time where you just went to the chicken wings. No, I'm just, like, hours late. if I want to catch rats on camera, they've already come and gone because he knows their exact schedule.

Did they come out at this time of day, this summer night? No, they come out earlier. Oh, so maybe I missed them. Because now the trash goes out of eight in the new law. So I think the rats have changed their schedule. Oh, the rats might have changed their schedule because of the trash? Yeah, it goes out later.

It goes out later. It goes out later. It's out of eight outside to the street. Uh-huh. That's interesting. Oh, wow. So basically, you know, I'm going to do the experiment anyways, but he's telling me it's probably not going to work

because the rats came out way earlier. Right, he knows their schedule. He knows their schedule. Sure enough, I import the footage into my computer. No rats come after my chicken wings. Okay. So now I know that Devin is doing his experiment on the same night, and he's kind of our last chance.

Yeah, so I was a bit worried because Manny Super said that the rats came already. I was like, I don't know if those are only his rats. It's like a citywide rat schedule. Or my rats on a different schedule. But I put it out there, did a similar thing. Put my bag on the ground next to the trash can. I was trying to figure out where to put the GoPro so that piece of one wouldn't steal it, because there are a lot of kids in my building too.

They like to play in the alley. But I recorded the process, too, of me setting it up. There's this alley away, and all the garbage cans are kind of lined up against the wall, and the rats run along the back side of the wall, so I have it sit up along that back side. along that backside. So I'll come back in like an hour and check on it. And then came down about an hour later.

And similar to Manny, I was like, oh, my bag is gone. Oh. The whole bag is gone. Did somebody throw it out? I guess I got a little bit of footage and see what happened. Which is weird because I don't have like a super in my building. We have, like, people who come and, like, take out the trash. Yeah.

But they had already done that because there was already trash on the curb. And I'm like, this building, no one is just nice and, like, picks up the trash and, like, puts it in a can. Yeah. So I literally looked in every single garbage can to be, like, where did they throw it out? So your assumption, even though it's just because the entire bag is gone, your assumption is that a human has done this. Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, like, you know, it was a big enough bag and, like, there were no remnants of anything. So I assumed, like, someone just picked it up and threw it out. But I got the GoPro, looked at the footage to just be like, all right, like, which idiot from my building did this? So I'll send you to video. Ooh.

So I haven't played yet, but it's just like your alleyway, some graffiti, and, like, three gray bins. And then, oh, you highlighted the bag. It's like... Yes. In between two of the recycling bins. Exactly. Okay, should I hit play? Yeah, let's sit in three, two, one.

Go. Okay. Oh, I see gray rat-like shapes. Oh, they're moving in. They're like investigating the scene. Like, they haven't really gone for the bag yet. Have they? Oh, they're like, is he ripping it open, the rat?

Oh, my God. He just, like, swiped the bag. Like, he pulled it behind the bin, and then he's just, like, off with it. So I watched that video, and I was like, oh, wait. So the rats did take the bag, but they moved it. Obviously somewhere, so I did go down and tried to find the bag to see like what did they do with it? Yeah.

Okay. I found the bag. Oh my God, and I found chicken bones. Oh my God. This is it. Ladies and gentlemen, we got them all. So you'd had a bag full of bones. Were there bones outside the bag?

Like, were they spread out? Like, what did it look like? The bag was completely torn apart. And there were, I put a lot more bones in there. So there are a lot of bones that weren't even there. So I don't even know where, like, half of the bones actually ended up. So I'll send you that video. Oh, here we go.

Okay. So this is your, like, next day surveillance? Yeah. Oh, there's bones. There's splintered chicken bones. They're just, like, really, they really pulverized these things. So they really ripped it apart. And, you know, you can see in a video that they're taking the bag from sort of, like, the open area.

And they kind of go and hide behind the recycling where you can't see it, from the view of the GoPro. And Jason, we asked Jason, like, why would they move the bag? Like, why wouldn't they just eat the chicken bones there? And he was like, well, they're usually trying to find, like, a safe spot if they're going to eat things. Which was also interesting when we were talking to him. He said that, like, in his research, he found that near rat burrows there were chicken bones. Oh, interesting.

So they sort of take it a little bit to, like, a safer place. And then they go in on it. And then Jason mentioned in our interview that to, look for rat bites and just as like a cautionary measure we sent Jason over email the pictures. And he's like, yeah, these definitely have rat bites on them. Oh, wow. Okay. So he confirms.

Yeah, it's confirmed. If this was a trial, rats would be found guilty. It's like you have evidence of the thing on videotape. You have physical evidence. You have expert testimony. Like, I feel pretty good about this. Yeah. And I think this is more evidence that I think any of us were anticipating going into this.

Oh, definitely. Especially after talking to Jason, because, okay, that's maybe the best we're going to get is find some chicken bones and be like, hey, are these rat bite marks? But to me, it was just sort of like, okay, we just put a bag down one night and we were able to, like, get this evidence. It's funny. It also makes me feel slightly differently. I have, in the past, I'll be walking down the sidewalk and I'll see a bunch of chicken bones strewn, and I'll be like, and I'll just feel frustrated because my brain will conjure this image of some person, like, eating a chicken bone and Homer Simpson, like, just throwing it over their shoulder onto the street. Now, if I see chicken bones on the street, I get to know that it's not a human being not caring about their environment.

I do have to know that it's like a band of ravaging rats. They're starving. They're starving. What are they going to do? And next time you do see it, I don't know if you'll be so inclined, but bend down and see if there's some bite marks on that. Said you guys a picture?

Yeah. Has spending this much time thinking and talking, talking about rats. Are you less grossed out by rats now or same amount? Or were you, like, what is this done to that? Yeah, there's a layer of like props. Like, yeah, go do, you know, you're going to, you need to eat, so do I. Yeah, in the abstract, talking now, yes, definitely. That said, I'd kind of have to see how I actually feel once the rat is in front of me. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I definitely have a, you know, just like I learned and respect the chicken a lot more. Similarly, the rat, I mean, they're trying to survive just like us. Yeah. You know, in,

In real life, it's like any person you meet, too. The more you get to know them, the easier it is to like them. You understand them. Not that I'm, like, going around, like, wanting to be friends with rats, but I just mean, like, it helps a little bit. Yeah, I feel, like, the feeling I usually have when I see a rat is, like, intruder. I'm like, you're not supposed to be here, go away. I hope you die.

Which is, like, not a great pain of thought for a person to have. And I'm like, okay, they're just trying to make it work. They're eating the meat off the bones that we're done with. I'm not going to invite them into my house, but, like, they have as much right to be here as I do. Yeah. In a way, we're sharing our meals. We're not at the table together, but they're finishing off our foods. You're throwing them a bone.

If people would like to follow you guys on more of your investigatory adventures, how can they do that? Yeah, they can go to mani, noadavin.com. You guys really were not able to come up with, like, a name for the unit, yes. This was our placeholder name. This is going to be the best thing we have so far. It's a real website. Mani-Noah Devon.com. Devon is spelled D-E-V-A-N.

Okay. So we just had so much fun doing this. We want to keep doing more investigations of this style. So if you go to our website, you can see our surveillance videos and other stuff we accrued making this and get a taste of future questions and investigations we'll be working on soon. Cool. So Manny, Noah.

Is it Manny Noah and Devon.com? No, no. No, and Devon.com? Devon, D-E-V-A-N. That's right. There you go. After the break, if the bones are because of the rats, and the rats are because of the trash,

could we do something about the trash? We talked to the executive director of policy and planning at New York's Department of Sanitation because, why not? And we learn about a garbage revolution that could sweep this dirty nation. This episode of Search Engine

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Yes, New York's strongest, New York City. So, Francesca, too many chicken bones in the city are caused by too many rats. What are too many rats caused by? Too much trash. Okay. And how does that happen? From the perspective of New York City's Department of Sanitation, why is there too much trash in New York City? So when I say too much trash, what I really mean is too much trash accessible to rats on the curb. So New York City is one of the only places in the world where residents and businesses alike set out trash directly on the curb in plastic bags as opposed to in containers.

When you walk around the city, has it been the case for you that for a long time, the idea of just dropping trash bags on the the street has seemed ridiculous or incorrect? Yeah, it's completely disgusting. And to be fair, I work in trash. I think about this problem all day long. So it's something that keeps me up at night. And trash is one of those things where when you travel around to other American cities to other global cities, you realize other people don't live this way. Just to step in here for a moment. So none of this is a problem in American suburbs. In the suburbs, most people put their trash in a bag, put the bag in a plastic wheeled container that goes to the end of the driveway. But the reason that system works in the suburbs is because there's plenty of space there.

In higher density areas, this solution can't really work for the simple problem of there's too much trash in apartment buildings to be accommodated in individual wheelie bins. And so that's really just a simple math problem of where do we store our trash. A lot of cities, Chicago, a lot of parts of England, they use alleyways. really well. So that's where you have your typical dumpsters. And you'll usually see those behind buildings. A lot of businesses use them. And that's an excellent solution where you can take your trash, store it somewhere while you wait for pickup, and either roll it out for collection or sometimes there's an access point. But New York City doesn't have alleyways. New York City does not have alleyways famously. So if you can't have, you know, tens of millions of wheelie bins in a city that's dense,

The idea is that if you imagine on one end of a continuum is the wheelie bin, on the other end is a massive metal dumpster, you're trying to find something in between those two containers, basically? Right. We're trying to find something that has sufficient volume, that it can accommodate the amount of waste currently produced. Yeah. We need it to be on the street,

because as we noted, we don't have alleyways, and we don't have scalable underground space that we can utilize. So this has to be above ground and either on the sidewalk or in the curb. And because it's going to be there permanently, it has to be a solution that is visually acceptable to New Yorkers. So what is this beautiful trash container of the future look like? Well, you'll have to wait and see what our beautiful trash container of the future looks like. More on that coming soon.

But you don't have to look very far to see other people who've already done this. And so who's done it? Almost every city across the world has done it. One city that we like to look to a lot is Madrid. Madrid. I'd say they have the gold standard solution in terms of the types of bins that we would like to see here in New York City. Hold on. I'm just looking this up real quick.

Yeah, sure. I just want to see. Oh, okay. So it's just like a... It's a Minecraft box. It's the Minecraft box. It's totally the Minecraft box. It's like three times bigger than a normal trash can.

It's plastic. And it sits on the street. It's kind of where sometimes... Sometimes the public bikes go, but it's like a big fat trash box that's like smaller than a dumpster, larger than a trash can. I wouldn't call it a big fat trash dumpster. I'd probably... Is that rude?

You know, I'm not sure it's a selling point. I think it's better than the giant big fat mounds of black bags that we've had on the streets for decades. No, it has like soft rounded edges. It's like not... It doesn't communicate grossness. Like I would... I think one of the things you're looking for... when you do this is you want something that you're asking someone to open a container that contains

other people's trash, not just their own, and people's minds have discussed reactions to trash. This looks like something that I would pull open and throw a trash bag in. Exactly. Francesca says there are obstacles here. The city has to convince people to give up parking spaces, which no one ever wants to do, and everyone would have to be slightly less lazy. Instead of tossing a garbage bag out your front door, you're walking down the block to the container of the future. But New York did recently introduce containers into just one neighborhood

to see what effect it would have on rat populations, a kind of beta test. We just piloted it, and we saw, to your question, a 68% reduction in rat sightings in the pilot zone. Wow. Wow. Is the pilot zone just like some streets where the city put containers in? It's in Hamilton Heights in northern Manhattan, over 10 residential blocks and at a number of schools. we put shared trash containers. Do the rats move to another place or do they starve? I don't want the rats, but do they starve? Can I say no comment?

That is cold. My job is trash. I'm not responsible for the rats. So in this zone, there are fewer rats than there would be in, say, like, the Upper West Side or, like, some moneyed, extremely fancy part of Manhattan right now. Well, we chose a zone on purpose that had a high incidence of rat sightings. We didn't want to pilot this solution in an area that already had highly containerized trash. And when you said the city intentionally chose to pilot this in an area that had a lot of rats,

do rich neighborhoods already do some version of their own containerized trash, basically? To different degrees. And part of the problem with containerization is that it is a collective action problem. You only need one or two uncontainerized houses on a street. to cause a rat problem for everyone else. But by and large, a lot of wealthier areas, particularly areas with high amounts of doorman buildings already effectively do containerized trash, where they set out the trash right before the truck comes, or they have storage inside where they store their trash and aren't setting it

out directly on the street. So you don't see an equal amount of rats across the city, and it maps on pretty cleanly to where you see certain trash behaviors around the city. Got it. Yeah, my assumption would have been that in wealthier neighborhoods, they just have more or better trash pickups. But it sounds like the container is actually a really big factor here. It's a huge factor. We all have the same trash pickup across the city.

So your vision of the future is that the same way, like, when you watch a period movie, like if I watch Mad Men, people are smoking and they're smoking inside, and you're like, oh, that's crazy. It's like in 20 years when they do a movie about this time period, one of the things they'll use to show how backwards and silly we were is just people keeping trash bags on the streets. Completely.

I want us to look back and say, I can't believe we used to live that way, and that's completely disgusting. Because it is. Francesca Haas, the executive director of policy and planning at New York City's Department of Sanitation. Also just want to say, we got a ton of great emails in the last week

from people with their own alternate theories about the chicken bone plague. Some of them very conspiratorial, plus stories about chicken bones across the world. If you've got theories or questions you want this show to answer, our inbox is always open. PJVote85 at gmail.com. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors out there whose job is to help your clients keep more of what they earn, Vanguard is here to help you with that. Vanguard is slashing fees again, this time for more

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That's vanguard.com slash impact. All investing is subject to risk, Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. This episode of Search Engine is brought you in part by Quince. I've realized the best way to refresh my wardrobe is not buying more, it's buying better, which is why Quince has become such a staple. Their pieces are thoughtfully designed, comfortable,

and actually make getting dressed simple. Their linen pants and shirts are lightweight, breathable, and look surprisingly polished without trying too hard. And their flow-knit active wear is soft, moisture-wicking, anti- odor. You can wear it all day without even thinking about it. The best thing is value, though. Quince works directly with ethical factories

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Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E-com search engine for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash search engine. Search engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw productions. It was created by me, PJ Vote, and Shruthie Pinnaminani. And is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Fact-checking this week by Sinta Taylor.

Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bizarrian. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman and Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Porello, and John Schmidt. And to the team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Rob Morandi, Cox, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Kate Hutchison, Morah Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hillary Schaff. Our agent is Orrin Rosenbaum at UTA. Our social media is by the team at Public Opinion, NYC.

Follow and listen to Search Engine with PJ Vote now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. That's our show this week. We will have a new story for you next week. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals. because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for citizens back. Hey, business owners, the NFL season is a big revenue driver.

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