That is a lot of rats in the city! What a research topic!
"... There’s about one rat in NYC for every three humans—and the rats’ numbers keep climbing. “They’re rugged, and they’re New Yorkers themselves: persistent and resilient and able to thrive in a very extreme environment,” computational neuroscientist Ralph Peterson told Scientific American . The vast majority of what’s known about their behavior comes from laboratory studies. He and his colleagues wondered just how well those findings extrapolate to the real world. So, they set up thermal cameras and ultrasonic recorders to eavesdrop on rats in three city locations—a park, a sidewalk, and a subway platform—and created AI tools to analyze and interpret the wealth of data they obtained. ...
Their findings ... suggest that city rats are far more vocal than previous studies would have predicted. “They’re just kind of screaming to each other, but we just don’t hear it” because it’s too high-pitched for our ears ... The rats were loudest in the subway, perhaps raising their voices to be heard over the ambient noise. Indeed, whenever the city’s volume turned up, the rats’ did, too. ..."
From the abstract:
"Urban rats are highly adaptable, thriving in the dynamic and often inhospitable conditions of modern cities. Despite substantial mitigation efforts, they remain an enduring presence in urban environments, yet surprisingly little is known about the daily lives and behavioral strategies that underlie their success.
Here, we conducted fieldwork on free-ranging rats in New York City, using thermal imaging and ultrasonic audio recordings. We apply cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques to capture high-resolution movement patterns and generate 3D reconstructions of foraging environments including subways, streets, and parks.
We characterize social vocalizations across environmental contexts, and compare the patterns of social communication observed in NYC rats to the distribution of rodent vocalizations reported in the literature. This work provides a foundation for translating techniques and theories of rodent cognition from the lab to urban ecological settings."
New York City’s Rats Have a Secret Nightlife—And a Language Humans Can’t Hear "A new preprint field study reveals that New York City’s rats aren’t just survivors—they’re talkative city dwellers with their own hidden nightlife. Mapping their movements and conversations could offer insights to transform urban planning and pest control"
Fig. 1 New York City citizen reports of rat sightings
Fig. 2 Groups of rats foraging in NYC environments observed using thermal imaging.
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